Guest Column: We need to learn to live with our mistakes

Generally speaking, we are not at ease with making mistakes, with being wrong, with failure, with falling outside norms, and that much more. We don’t want to disappoint people whose approval we want

One thing that we human beings have in common is that we all make mistakes. One way or another, sooner or later, we all do it. If you’ve made mistakes in this life, know that you are not alone. Everyone on the planet does it. Mistakes are the ultimate sign that we are human. We should be comfortable making mistakes, admitting them and sharing them with one another from an early age. That is healthy as we will then be more accepting of our own humanity and feel much more at ease with each other. Perhaps we will be much more supportive of each other too.

The best thing to do is learn from mistakes and move on. (Shutterstock)

But that is so often not the case. Collectively, we tend to be quite afraid of making mistakes and feel immensely uncomfortable afterwards. It could be that throughout human history our survival has relied on us not making mistakes. Nature’s diktat: One mistake and you’ll be dead, could have been so ingrained in our DNA that it instinctively comes through when we do something wrong. With many social structures, religions and cultures around the world severely condemning people for making mistakes throughout the ages, our brains actually flash an error message when we go against social norms.

Generally speaking, we are not at ease with making mistakes, with being wrong, with failure, with falling outside norms, and that much more. We don’t want to disappoint people whose approval we want.

We are just not very comfortable with being human. The school system alone teaches us from a young age that being wrong won’t lead to success – think about the test papers with red marks. So many of our systems, along with our upbringing, can so often create shame, pain, and tell us that we are ‘bad’ people. Or simply not good enough.

Learn to say that you are sorry both to yourself and to those whom you’ve hurt through your mistakes. By apologising to those you’ve wronged, you take responsibility and offer a chance for closure and healing. You also offer them a chance to forgive you. By apologising to yourself, you offer yourself compassion, for not knowing any better, or for simply screwing up in spite of knowing better. We all have our own baggage, and we need to learn to cut ourselves some slack and learn to forgive ourselves. This is also an excellent chance to engage your own inner critic and recognise the patterns that are sabotaging your ability to forgive yourself. Learn to quiet that harsh inner voice and look beyond the mistake – be kind to yourself.

In many ways, being wrong is the only option we can count on as humans. The story of humanity is after all built on endless mistakes – and it is only by learning how to acknowledge them to ourselves and to one another that we can truly heal our story, and inherently our planet. The more obsessed we are with being right, the more walls we put between ourselves and the world. We need these walls to come down, and we need to normalise being wrong, so that we may heal and evolve in a fundamental way as a collective. There is no harm in being wrong as long as you can correct the wrong.

mahavirindia@yahoo.com