Fall In Love With Your Mistakes
Most hard workers and high achievers hate hate hate making mistakes.
Even hearing the word “mistake” makes them feel uncomfortable.
So they work very hard to avoid mistakes and, if they make one, they get busy beating themselves up for being so stupid.
And they truly believe that this approach is a key ingredient to their success.
Let me offer you an alternate theory:
Avoiding mistakes and beating yourself up when make you one is holding you back.
You are successful in spite of your relationship with mistakes. Not because of it.
And if you changed this relationship around…
If you fell in LOVE with your mistakes…
The ones where you genuinely didn’t know what to do beforehand
AND the ones where you did know what to do, and you just didn’t do it
You would unlock your potential at a level that you would not believe.
And you would be able to do absolutely anything you wanted.
You have been operating with one hand tied behind your back.
And you have no idea how much further you could go if you just set yourself free.
So let me offer you three ways to fall in love with your mistakes.
1: Mistakes are interesting
Mistakes are a fascinating problem to be solved.
An interesting puzzle to get absorbed in.
A fun opportunity to tinker and adjust — to turn the dials and tweak the process and see what happens.
You live in an endlessly fascinating world where who the hell knows what causes what.
You DON’T know the answer. Everything is up for grabs.
So roll up your sleeves, put on your analytical hat, and get busy playing around.
You can try anything. And that’s what makes it fun.
2: Mistakes are noble and brave
A mistake is a sign that you are in the arena.
So many people are too afraid to try. But not you.
You wipe the sweat off your face, get up, and get back in the ring — again and again.
You’re sore — but that just means your muscles are getting stronger.
You keep showing up, day after day, long after the others have quit.
You’re willing to learn how to be humble. You’re willing to see your shortcomings.
You are brave enough to try and fail.
And the moment when the gap between what you wanted and what you got is the biggest — THAT is the moment when you go deep and become better than ever.
3: Mistakes are THE way to become an elite performer
Think of the people you most admire in the world.
Seriously: bring them clearly into your mind’s eye and think of all of the qualities and accomplishments you most admire about them.
If they had a mistake counter floating above their head, their “mistake count” would be 10x or even 100x yours.
And they got where they are today BECAUSE their mistake count is so incredibly high.
They have failed MORE and BIGGER and MORE PUBLICLY and with HIGHER STAKES than you can imagine.
And that is what made them succeed.
The only way to become the person you want to be is to learn your way through every single mistake. The bigger and juicier, the better.
Making, analyzing, and learning from mistakes is what elite progress looks like.
You’re not in “study hard and ace the test” land anymore.
This is the big leagues, where the test come first and the lesson comes afterward.
And elite performers are the ones who seek out a lot of tests and get very good at learning the lesson afterward.
(Without beating themselves up while they do it — that’s just a distraction.)
So when something blows up in your face BIG — it’s not a sign that you’re failing.
It’s a sign that you’re doing it right.
How deeply are you able to believe this perspective? What resistance does your brain still have, and how will you address it?
How consistently are you able to maintain this perspective? How can you remember and apply this every single day?
How will you react when your brain snaps back hard into its old way of thinking? When something goes very wrong and all you want to do is run away?
Those are the exact things that we’ll work on together — until thinking and acting this way is so habitual that you’ll forget that you ever thought otherwise.
Don’t wait another day. The future version of you is waiting. Let’s get started.
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