The fear of making mistakes is a bit of the fear of life itself. As it is an unappealable fact that no one can know the future, no one can be sure of the consequences that actions or decisions made in the present may have. Life is not just a future, it is mainly a to-come and this is precisely what causes the most fear. The most important things are what will happen tomorrow, not what happened yesterday; With reference to the latter we have the intimate consolation that we can do nothing about it, however in terms of what will happen tomorrow we feel fully responsible. Tomorrow's "modeling" requires action today.
Interestingly, the relative control of what will happen tomorrow increases the greater our current actions and decisions. Inaction leaves us at the mercy of chance and the whim of circumstances. And although in reality the latter is what should cause us the most fear, the opposite is usually the case: we are afraid of being wrong in the actions and decisions we adopt today.
Acting and making decisions is the only way not to be a victim of circumstances, it is the only way to transcend the tiny space-time portals that make up life with a minimum of control. If this possibility were denied us, we would end up being like stagnant water that soon decomposes.
Acting is a human imperative and making decisions is a natural consequence, therefore the possibility of making mistakes is a concrete fact. No one is exempt from this. Errors qualify the action and to this specific reason they owe their virtuosity, neither more nor less, errors are a virtue, because they accompany the dynamics without which the development of life could not be explained. Where there is a history of development and progress there will be a history of errors, where there is a great history of development and progress there will be a great history of errors. In the fine analysis of the evolution of man it will surely be necessary to conclude that it is rather a long history of numerous errors and a few successes.
The cost of avoiding making mistakes has two enormous components: on the one hand, inaction that leaves us at the mercy of chance and circumstances, and on the other the risk of not getting a hit. In inaction there is stagnation and future involution, without successes there is neither development nor progress.
The widespread culture of risk aversion that so excruciatingly characterizes many of our peoples is precisely an extension of the atavistic fear we have of making mistakes. From an early age we are taught to make as few mistakes as possible, to think half a dozen times before saying or doing something that may be wrong. The successes are mystified at the cost of making the smallest possible mistakes, therefore there are few errors and also few successes. Children are the ideal group of people to severely apply the correction to mistakes, adolescents are the group of people with the highest risk of making mistakes (semi-conscious), young people (thankfully) are learning to make fewer and fewer mistakes,and adults are allowed to make a mistake as long as the same mistake is not made twice.
Cultures that reprimand the error but at the same time mystify the success.
Can you have many hits while minimizing errors?
It is actually these Cultures that are making a serious mistake. Applying such a demanding criterion of Efficiency in this dynamic is a recipe that leads directly to delay and postponement. The dynamics of growth need mistakes for learning to occur and hence progress.
On the other hand, it is significant what this culture of "efficiency" in committing errors causes at Work. It goes without saying that the person who works best is the one who makes the fewest mistakes. The analysis of productivity itself is based on this. The most renowned quality control systems are based on this. This is the guiding concept on which careers and success stories must be built. However, it seems that it is very difficult to understand that the more "good work" is associated with the least commission of errors, the more vigor the logic of completely substituting man for the machine takes, being that we have not yet reached the conclusion that it replacement is perfect or even desirable.
These lines are effectively an apology for the commission of errors, however, for this reason they do not pursue the justification of "bad." Understanding the virtue of making mistakes does not lead to acceptance of what is not right. Of course, the end product of the process of committing errors will end up being the success, ultimately that is the objective; error is a means and not an end in itself. The virtue of error is that it precisely creates the vehicle by means of which the success is reached. This vehicle is learning. In reality you learn much more from one mistake than from a hundred hits. Greater witness to the latter can be given by the meticulous aviation industry, which capitalizes precisely on this precept to reach a state that is increasingly exceeding its successes.
Learning leads to knowledge and forms that precious reservoir that is experience. The sum of knowledge and experience guarantees development and guarantees competitiveness. Competitiveness is precisely one of the most precious products of learning that emerges from making mistakes, because the more competitive is the one who has managed better in this dynamic.
Business organizations have a specific challenge to progressively reverse this culture of mystification of success. Expecting that Families and other basic organizations involved in the formation of people will soon do so is difficult. The hierarchical conditions that dominate the sense of institutional development of companies, added to the need they have to maintain efficient and competitive profiles in the market, make them the ideal organizations to promote a culture that encourages action, decisions, dynamics modeling of the future. It is not that in this they have a social responsibility, because in the end they do not have it beyond what the interest of the business determines, rather that in it they have an opportunity to Stand out in the middle.Faced with a culture that mystifies the success and punishes the error, the company that promotes the natural commission of errors among its human cadres will, by force, achieve greater successes, and this is ultimately what distinguishes the Business.
Make mistakes please! This is the measure of your actions and decisions, this is the measure of your interest in learning and accumulating experience. This is the way to take responsibility for your own future and not just be an accident of chance or circumstance. Ultimately this is the greatest proof that you are working in a way that can never be beneficially replaced by a machine. And don't lose sight of the fact that if you are working in an environment that mystifies success and punishes failure, you are probably in the wrong place.
An anonymous friar from a Nebraska ministry said this in a posthumous letter: "If I could live my life again, I would try to make more mistakes next time…"
Do you realize the enormous cost that is involved in the difficult and painful process of avoiding mistakes? Do you realize that after so much time we spend avoiding mistakes we hardly perceive and enjoy the successes? Imagine how many opportunities we lose in life just trying to avoid the mistake? Can you calculate the amount of Freedom that we resign?
You know, forget the fear of making mistakes! Leave prejudice behind! In the mistakes the search for success is explained, by committing them you live more because you go further.
And on the desk or in the office, wherever you spend more time, place a sign without any discretion that says: "… excuse me, in this place many mistakes are made because we are obsessed with achieving success."
