About making mistakes

"When we learn something new, we don’t go from 'wrong' to 'right.' Rather, we go from wrong to slightly less wrong."
Mark Manson.

We have a non-healthy relationship with mistakes. We are so ashamed of making them in first place, that we avoid even starting out fearing making a mistake along the way. Just don’t.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, and that’s how I’ve become well good in a few areas compared to the average of the population.

I had a math teacher back in high school whom I owe everything I know in math and my desire to get better at it. He used to get mad at me whenever I made an “stupid” mistake on an exam or a homework and pushed me beyond my limits to get better. Let me tell you, I made tons of mistakes on math exams on 5 years of high school on his classes (Yes, in Venezuela, education is a little different). Every year, every period, something always happened to me on an exam that I couldn’t get the highest score.

Years later, for the people that knew me on college I was some kind of math prodigy, I scored the highest score on almost every exam, on almost every math-related subject. It’s easy to look at someone at this level and think they have to be some kind of martian or something. No, I just made so many mistakes on this, that the right way of doing it just comes naturally to me.

Have the courage to make mistakes at whatever it is that you do, because it’s precisely that consistency that will enable you to really master that area in your life.

"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
Michael Jordan