“This is not for me”, “if I was smarter I would have done it”, “same thing again”. Do these phrases sound familiar to you? If so, it is because you have faced the immense wall of failure. Just because, making mistakes hurts. And annoying. It’s uncomfortable. But the real punishment usually comes later, when we turn that mistake into proof that we are not worth enough. As if being wrong gave way to the final verdict. As if others can stumble, but we can’t.

And yet, every great discovery in history is the result of thousands of errors. Because only when we make mistakes can we learn. Thomas Edisoninventor of the electric light bulb, knew this very well.

His is the famous phrase that says: “I haven’t failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” Because getting it right the first time is something that rarely happens. The important thing is to accept it as soon as possible, to know that the more times you fail, the closer you are to success.

What scares you?

Thomas Edison was not a genius who got everything right the first time. In fact, in his search for the light bulb, Edison tested more than 6,000 different materials for the filament alone.. His biographer, Paul Israel, tells it in Edison: A life of invention (1998). Many took him for crazy, for stubborn. But if he had surrendered to the first, or at the same time number 5,999, perhaps the history of humanity would have been very different.

Edison insisted, and insistedbecause he understood that what we should be afraid of is not error, but surrender.

The moment we give up, we have lost. The only definitive failure is the one we accept as such. As long as we maintain the will to get up and try again, we will continue to have the opportunity to get it right.. And, as Edison himself said, every mistake puts us just one step closer to success.

Learn from mistakes

There is something powerful in Edison’s quote, beyond the fact that it invites us to never give up. And, as we can see with his example, each failure brings us closer to success. Each “error” is the discovery of something that does not work, which allows us to think of another way of acting, another possible solution.

And that is, after all, the basis of human intelligence. We must understand intelligence as the ability we have to solve problems. If we lived in a perfect world, in which it was not necessary to solve anything, in which errors did not exist, we would never learn and we would lose intelligence, the ability that has allowed us to evolve as a species.

In fact, as the psychologist explains Carol Dweckauthor of the book Mindsetit can be much easier to face the remains with the famous cognitive flexibility than a fixed mindset. That is to say, assume from the beginning that our main idea may be wrong.

José Antonio Marina also explains it to us in his book The vaccine against foolishnesswhen he talks to us about confirmation bias. This inclines us to focus only on those things that confirm what we believe, and in this way it leads us to serious errors.. Maintaining a mindset open to error can help us avoid this mental trap. If we assume that it is very likely that we will make mistakes and readjust our minds to focus on what we failed, and not so much on what we got right, we will always be more willing to be intelligent, sensible people with the capacity for growth.

Denying your mistakes limits you

In line with the above, José Antonio Marina writes in his aforementioned book, “there is no greater manifestation of stupidity than that of the one who claims, putting on a face of virtuous authenticity, that he does not regret anything. That means you haven’t learned anything.«If we are not wrong, or worse still, if we deny our mistakes, we are condemning ourselves to the stupidest of lives.

With this in mind, it’s time to reframe our thinking to focus on how mistakes can help us grow, rather than just denying or avoiding them.

• Change the focus. Instead of asking yourself, “why did this happen to me?”, putting yourself in a victim role, ask yourself, “what can I learn from this?” This simple linguistic turn activates a growth mindset, which allows you to not get caught up in self-criticism and start looking for solutions and possible learnings.
• Practice self-compassion. When you make a mistake, make a conscious effort to avoid phrases like “I’m a mess” and replace them with kinder, more realistic ones, like “this didn’t turn out the way I expected, but I can handle it.” Talk to yourself as if you were your best friend, because self-compassion is key.
• Accept the error as part of the process. Remind yourself that failing is not the end of the road, but part of learning. In fact, much research shows that errors activate areas of the brain that improve memory and future performance.

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