Making Good Mistakes Part 2

One book I've really enjoyed is called Failing Forward.  Again, ironic.  But is it?   It's one thing to allow our kids to make mistakes and learn from them, but what about ourselves.  As adults, mistakes seem to be bad things.  As I've said to our kids, "If you're not making any mistakes, you're just not trying hard enough!"

The reason we make mistakes is because we're trying something new. We haven't mastered a skill yet and we're practising.  When we learn to ride a bike on two wheels, we wobble, maybe fall off, but it's not seen as a mistake.  We're just learning.  Somehow, when we grow up, however, we get a new job for example, we're not learning, we're making mistakes we're ashamed of.  What changed? 

When we're kids, we are learning to be friends and get along with others.  We say and do dumb things.  Fortunately as kids, we have short memories, and don't hold grudges for years. We forget and are friends again.  But, we become adults, get into relationships, say and do dumb things, but these are seen as mistakes and we're punished for them.  Unfortunately, we're just learning, but we're not given the grace to make a mistake because we're adults now, and we should know better. 

Young adults are new to having adult relationships.  Ofcourse they'll make mistakes.  When we're newly married, we're adluts, but we've never been married before, ofcourse we'll make mistakes.  We have a baby.  We've never had one before.  We'll make mistakes while we're learning.  Then you have another baby.  You think you'll know what to do, but this baby is different from the last one.  You're almost back to square one. 

What about decisions we make as adults, when our children are old enough to realise things didn't quite turn out as we had hoped.  Do we try to hide our disappointment and our mistake.  When we say and do something dumb, do we hide it or own and it, and apologise.  When we have conflict, are we able to model how to resolve a conflict or how to keep a grudge.  When we have a failure, are we showing our kids how to be deluded, how to quit or how to get up back up and try again. By trying to avoid misatkes, we're saying we don't want to try anything new, because we're scared or we may look silly.

Mistakes aren't the problem. It's how we resond to them and get back up again, dream a new dream, and keep going.