The older we get, the more careful we become. Every step we take must be thought through. And if we make a mistake, we are overwhelmed by panic: “How could I make a misprint here?”, “Why did I get this job?”, “Why did I say that out loud?”. We tell you why you have to stop being afraid of making mistakes and how you can turn them to your advantage.
Get rid of the perfectionism
If you want to succeed in something, the first thing to get rid of is a tendency to perfectionism. Yes, yes. Professional speaker Scott Berkun in his book, Confessions of a Public Speaker, says that every time he stands in front of an audience, he knows he’ll make mistakes. And that’s okay.
After all, if you listen to our speech, you will find that even the best speakers make a lot of mistakes. Michael Erard, the author of a study on how we talk, has come to the following conclusion:
– If a person pronounces 15,000 words a day on average, it means that he makes about 1,500 flubs. The next time you open your mouth, listen to yourself carefully. You stutter; you forget the words, you mispronounce the sounds (and when you type, you change the letters in some places or miss them). It goes unnoticed in many cases, but all these mistakes are awfully interesting, as well as the reason why we ignore them or why we notice them.
Judge for yourself: Lincoln had a high and thin voice, Dale Carnegie had a southern accent. Cicero was breathing too deep when he spoke, and Barbara Walters, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, and even Moses stuttered and lisped. But the listeners didn’t care. Because they talked interestingly. People did not pay attention to mistakes – they remembered people with positions and ideas.
Most of our mistakes are noticed only by us
Being flawless is difficult and meaningless at the same time. As Tyler Durden said, a character from the movie “Fight Club”: you have to get rid of the mania to become perfect, because it prevents growth. If you stop taking risks, you stop learning. And besides, when everything is perfect, it’s just boring.
Learn to take mistakes
There will always be mistakes. The main thing is your attitude towards them. There are two ways to accept them more easily.
Avoid erroneous assumptions not to make any mistakes. It’s simple: let’s say you’re getting ready for the presentation. Be sure to learn all the material, rehearse, tune in. Do the best you can.
But don’t forget: everything is unlikely to be perfect. When you understand this, small mistakes, if you do make them, will not oppress you much.
How people react to your mistakes often depends on how you react. It’s the same example in the presentation. If your shirt is a little wrinkled and you perceive it as a disaster, then listeners will certainly notice it too and shake their heads disapprovingly. But if you are calm or can laugh at it, the audience will do the same.
What to do if you’re embarrassed?
When we’re wrong, we feel ashamed. We want to run away and hide somewhere from all strangers. But that’s not the way out. It’s better to do the following:
– Don’t resist. Try to accept the situation. Do not hide your emotions – it is better to admit to yourself that something went wrong and probably led to a mistake. It is unpleasant, but it has already happened.
– Turn shame into guilt. Shame often occurs when we think that we are our mistakes. We believe that the problem is in us: not in the decisions made, methods of communication, delusions. It’s us. Actually, it isn’t. Let’s try to turn shame into guilt. Feelings, of course, are close, but still different.
Guilt is a powerful feeling. But its influence is more positive, and shame really destroys it. So if you’re wrong, stop thinking you’re bad. Turn “I’m bad” into “I made a mistake,” and “I’m a loser” into “I failed.”
How do you learn from mistakes?
Your mistakes are, of course, a reason to see what you did wrong. But often the problems are hidden in the very preparation for something.
If you take the presentation as an example, look: it’s not your miscalculations during the presentation that matter, it’s what you did before you said the first word. For example, unclear wording of your point of view, inability to convey your thoughts to the audience. That’s what really matters.
It’s the same with other situations. Think, why did it happen? Where’s the real reason for the failure? If you figure out how to avoid those misses, everything else won’t matter.