My just turned seven year old received a science kit for her birthday this year. She relishes the different experiments that they suggest (almost all involving coloured foaming explosions of one kind or another).
What’s interesting though, is that from time to time she doesn’t read the instructions properly and misses a step or adds something that she doesn’t mean to. And when she does this, she is even more interested. She doesn’t view this as a failure or a mistake, but rather, through wondrous eyes of “what might happen now?”
I love watching her: thinking and exploring and learning through her mis-takes. I think that hyphen should always exist in the word mis-take, as it seems to better sum up what a mistake is, just a miss take along the way — i.e. —a step/path that was different to what you thought or intended.
It got me thinking about when do we stop thinking in this way, like kids do? And when do we start thinking that any deviation from our intended path means failure?
I have a friend who has her own business. It’s a very successful business with a visible brand presence and a strong tribe. This business has had a few mis-steps over the years, but the owner very clearly “owns” those as part of the journey. Rather than apologise, she celebrates how the path is becoming clearer in part by learning through those mis-steps and she’s bringing her tribe along with her, and making her brand even stronger.
Another person I am getting to know is Kelly Exeter from “A Life Less Frantic“. She wrote today about how she has applied a number of times to present at a Pro Blogger, a high profile blogging conference. She talks about her rejections, but more importantly about how she continued on, how she learnt from those rejections and persevered through to success!
So it seems that we can do this as adults.
We can look at our mis-steps or mis-takes through wondrous eyes of learning just like my little girl. We can keep trying rather than give up. We can own (even celebrate) the journey rather than apologise for not being “perfect”. And rather than expect perfection the first time, we can value the journey rather than just the end outcome.
And rather than look at mis-takes or mis-steps as failure; rather view them as something to learn from, and to be wondrous in our learning rather than be shamed. (Incidentally, Brene Brown talks about this in Daring Greatly, a book well worth the read.)
What do you think? Is there something that you’ve “failed” at recently or that hasn’t gone your way that could actually be a really important part of your journey? Let me know.
Until next week,
