Reflections on the Importance of Mistakes, Recovery, and Resilience
Author Craig Lambert in his book, Mind Over Water: Lessons on Life from the Art of Rowing (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), at pages 85, 87-88 instructs us on the importance of mistakes, recovery, and resilience.
According to Lambert, “The more mistakes we commit, the faster our learning curve slopes skyward. Actually, it is not mistakes but attempts that are the oxygen of success. Most real learning comes from trial and error—a profligate, heedless, excessive abundance of trials.”
We get into trouble because we conflate mistakes with failure. Lambert reminds us that “Mistakes are not failures; they are results that diverge from our expectations.” Mistakes are our teachers, but only if we pay attention and learn their lessons: “After making an error, the essential thing is to notice what happened. Precisely how did reality differ from our image? That gap holds new information. Errors ought to fascinate us. But to receive their message, we must be concentrating on our task, rather than ourselves. Nature withholds her lessons from those who gaze only inward.”
A friend who took up figure skating in her late forties described for me the difference between her and the young children in her class in learning to do a basic spin. She said that in an hour lesson, she may attempt three or four spins which invariably result in her falling onto the ice. By contrast, a young skater in the class may attempt a spin every 60 to 90 seconds, so that in an hour lesson a youngster has attempted more than 40 spins. Lambert explains the importance of this difference: “In dealing with errors, a crucial variable is recovery time. A short recovery time between a ‘failure’ and the next attempts embodies the character trait we call resilience. Nothing accelerates progress more than resilience.”
The first really big mistake I made in my life was going to MIT after high school. I was the first in my family to go to college. I had no know-how about what was required to be a successful student at an elite (and therefore extremely competitive) school. I was mistaken about my innate ability to understand calculus and physics. I pledged a fraternity. I rowed on the freshman crew. I did not really study. When I got my first semester GPA of 1.8, I was shocked but not surprised. My going to MIT proved itself to be a big mistake.
Fortunately, I immediately applied to a small liberal arts college in Iowa, which accepted me and gave me a scholarship despite my disastrous first semester at MIT. Because Grinnell College was located in rural Iowa, I studied—for four or more hours a day, seven days a week. I learned time management and self-discipline. I became interested in my courses. I befriended a few teachers who became mentors. I became passionate about majoring in philosophy. My GPA soared to 3.8 and I was having fun studying, learning, and writing.
This early experience of academic failure, recovery, and resilience has helped me survive and learn from other big mistakes I have made in my life. It helped me follow my passion into teaching and it motivated me to change careers in my late fifties.
As Lambert counsels, “our life work reveals itself through trial and error. Each experience teaches us about our aptitudes and our preferences as well as showing us where we lack desire or talent. Tacking along a career path, every false start is important. The zigzagging never stops; we never ‘arrive’ but continually refine how our work expresses who we are.”
I think this article tells about the real difference between a loser and a winner. As no one can completely avoid troubles and problems from life but they can learn a lesson form that mistakes and troubles. The real skill is to handle is how people handle losing, instead of viewing our mistakes as a negative reflection of our ability we need to make acknowledge our situation, learn a lesson from that and move forward. Resilience is the ability to recover from mistakes and bounce back.
I think that because everybody is so afraid of failure that we miss out on a lot of great opportunities. I feel that the most successful people in life are those that are not afraid to take calculated risks, not just stupid risks. We should always looks to learn from our failures and mistakes, not become stifled by them.
No one likes to lose because we have been told that when you are a loser you are “less than”. Overcoming this cultural indoctrination requires a huge shift. By teaching this skill to the young children around us, we can perhaps make a little progress. Take every opportunity, however small, to teach this principle. In our lives, practice re-framing our losses, until it becomes a part of us also. The best teaching tool is our example.
One thing to remember is failure should never be accepted but should always be expected. It is part of life and is a great way to learn if you just open your mind to the possibilities that can come up after the failure. People like Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and other had a hundred failures before the successes.
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
I think speaks volumes in regards to failures. To succeed you have to try something. but as it also shows if you fail admit it then move to the next something. I like how he went from MIT and then started fresh with something new but this time took the lessons he learned and moved forward to a better future.
This entry reminded me of a quote that one of my friends recently told me–‘write your goals in stone but your plan to reach those goals in sand.’ I feel like it’s good to have high expectations of ourselves, but when we expect it to come without trial or error, we have a hard time amending our plans. This blog post reiterated the reality that to get the best out of ourselves, we have to be patient with ourselves and allow flexibility. Being resilient to failures helps us be resilient to all negativity in life, ultimately making us happier and more successful people.
I remember reading a quote essentially saying that the fear of failure has single handy stopped more successes in human history then anything else that we have don’t to or for ourselves. I believe that that rides along perfectly with this article because it is all true. That is why our grandparents were so great because we got to learn from their experiences and hopefully not make the same mistake!
Kind of off of what Adrian said I never thought I was scared of failing until I heard the quote “What would you do if you knew you wouldn’t fail.” It’s actually a very hard philosophy to apply, but what I’ve learned so far is that it’s important to try not to focus on not failing, but on being successful. And also to accept the fact that every failure as mentioned is nothing more then a great lesson we get to learn, and one we might not of if we had never tried.
A favorite quote of mine, that came from a semi-retired, dirty, greasy, cowboy, diesel mechanic is this “The only way to fail is to stop trying.” This has helped me so much in my life, as I am sure we all come to know. Sometimes learning things from the school of hard knocks is better, because we learn valuable skills along the way that will help us and be an advantage to us later on down the road. It has been said that Edison didn’t fail the first so many odd hundred times that he tested the lightbulb, he just found ways that it didn’t work. So many times it is all in our perspective of how we look at things.
This article is awesome and as I feel that I have a hard time being resilient this really does speak to me. It kind of relates to shame vs guilt in my opinion. If we become shameful over a mistake or something that we did wrong we tend to give up and are less resilient, but if we see it as a flaw with how we did something and not a flaw of our character (guilt), then it is much easier for us to bounce back, we don’t take it personally. two quotes that stuck out to me in this article were:
Nature withholds her lessons from those who gaze only inward.”
and,
The zigzagging never stops; we never ‘arrive’ but continually refine how our work expresses who we are.”
The mistakes quotes are very true. I’ve been told my whole life, especially within the past 3 years or so, that making mistakes is OK because we all make them! We just have to learn the important lessons from them so that when we encounter them we will know what to do.
I’m glad I’ve read this, because mistakes are inevitable but how we react to them and learn from them will ultimately determine what will happen for the rest of our lives.
I like this article, is very moving and inspirational. I love the line “Mistakes are our teachers, but only if we pay attention and learn their lessons”. I feel improvement can only be done by looking back at our own mistakes and learning from them.
It’s sad how we mistakenly associate mistakes with failure, just like we do with vulnerability and weakness when they are not at all the same. To succeed we must try and try again, there is no way to achieve something great without making a few mistakes, this is how we learn what not to do. Mistakes should not be punished, they should be celebrated because it means you’ve learned something and are one step closer to reaching your goal. Those who can get up and brush themselves off ready to try something else after making a blunder will be the ones who accomplish great things.
Such an interesting concept of understand mistakes and failure. This is something that i wish i could have a better grasps when I’m in situations where I’m not exactly sure how to differentiate them. Great read and I’m happy to have found this article.
This was a great article! Mistakes don’t always mean a failing on our part (and even when they do, they can certainly be more valuable than if we hadn’t failed.) The old saying about eggs and omelettes succinctly covers this topic pretty well. The only difference between successful people and failures are the successful people didn’t stop failing until they succeeded.