Is making mistakes bad?

Whether it's in the HSC or in life, making mistakes may not necessarily be a bad thing. While making the same mistakes over and over again is obviously not be good, making mistakes can actually be very beneficial for our learning and development.

"From their errors and mistakes, the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.”

- Plutarch (ancient Greek writer)

You live and you learn; doing certain tasks are what teaches us lessons, but it is usually where you make mistakes that the learning becomes more memorable. It shows us things we did not consider before, and helps point us in the right direction when it comes to making choices in the future.

You won't learn anything new if you don't try different things. At the same time when you try new things there's no guarantee you won't make mistakes along the way. For example, we all have had bad haircuts before when we tried out new styles which we first thought would look fantastic. 8/10 times, it turned out hideous, but it's that 2/10 times when it did turn out well did we discover something better which we would have never known about if we never tried. This may have been a weird example, but you get the point.

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

- Albert Einstein

Mistakes are a sign that one is living their life to the fullest extent; would you really want to live the same days and years for the rest of your life by not experiencing the unknown? Sure, doing things you've never done before will probably lead to mistakes, but it is this that makes our lives interesting and fun to live. As Wayne Dyer putted it, “there are some people who live 70 years, and there some people who live one year 70 times." 

 “We have to make mistakes, it's how we learn compassion for others.”

- Curtis Sittenfeld (author)

Mistakes are the things which show us the need for forgiveness and compassion; to others and ourselves. It allows us to understand that making mistakes is only part of human nature, and can actually be a sign of one's drive to improve. You should also not be too harsh on yourself when you make mistakes, you should accept that it's part of human nature, and the learning process. Everyone makes mistakes, what's important is that you learn from them to become better.

“If you are afraid to take a chance, take one anyway. What you don't do can create the same regrets as the mistakes you make.”

- Iyanla Vanzant (famous life coach)

Having mistakes can ironically correlate with having less regrets. As humans, we are more likely to have longer lasting regrets of not undertaking things rather than doing things which turned out disastrously.

No matter what your age is, looking back, I'm sure many of us have regrets of not doing something we wanted to do, but never did out of fear of failing or making mistakes. Whether it be not joining a new club at school, not trying out for a sports team, not doing that extra past paper before the exam. If you don't give those things a go, you might have to live with the regret of not knowing what it could have been, and that should be more the shame. 

If we want to improve or try something new, we are bound to make mistakes along the way. As Al Franken said, "Mistakes are a part of being human. Precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way."

Jack Zheng | N° 6