Everyone has ever been afraid of being wrong about something. Fear of making a bad decision. Fear of saying something "stupid". Fear of accepting something painful because it makes us feel incompetent. Fear of poor sexual performance. Guilt for actions we did inadvertently and that hurt someone we love in any way. Every of us who live in this world have been there, and therefore we know that being in these situations has nothing idyllic or pleasant.
When you finish reading this post, you will be ready to deal with that kind of feeling and to be one-step closer to the kind of life you want.
Mistakes are an intrinsic part of humanity.
You are born without knowing anything about this world and you have to start learning how things work to be able to move in it. One way of learning is by modeling what others do: observing people around you, listening to advice from people around you who have more knowledge than you, reading books (which is nothing more than knowledge that authors put on paper or digital sheets), etc. Another way is: make mistakes.
The world around us, among many laws, is governed by one known as the Law of Cause and Effect: when A (cause) happens, as a consequence, B (effect) happens. This law has its reciprocal, which is: every effect is caused by a prior action. For example: if a liquid falls on the ground, it gets wet. And if the earth is wet, it is because a liquid has fallen on it.
Making a mistake is simply pursuing a certain result (effect) but doing something (cause) that it is not what is necessary for this to happen.
An example for you to follow me:
Imagine a child who wants to grow a plant. He is doing it by his own. He knows he should water it, but not with what. How many liquids can the child choose to water it? Soft drinks of all kinds, dishwashers, any medicine that remains on hand, water, etc.
How many times would he has to be wrong until find that the plant needs water? Among a multitude of liquids to choose from, only one gives him the result he want.
This is why mistakes and humanity are intertwined. In a world in which for something to happen we have to choose between millions of possible actions to take, with only a few that can make that something happen, it is naive to think that we will not make mistakes sometimes.
The problem comes when you just don't learn from the mistake and keep doing the same. A reporter asked Thomas Edison how many times he failed when trying to make the light bulb and he replied: "I didn't fail, I only found 10000 ways not to make a light bulb."
So if making mistakes is so natural, why does it make us feel bad?
Let's start with the fact that we live in a world where the educational system punishes those who make mistakes. Children who don’t get good grades on their tests, who make a mistake in answering something, or do their homework wrong are generally treated as less. What generates that both, those who do things well and those who don’t, feel the pressure to do things perfectly all the time for fear of being denigrated or humiliated.
In addition, many parents exacerbate this fear, forcing children to obtain certain grades in order to have toys, clothes, Christmas gifts or whatever they want, making them live with the enormous pressure of not making mistakes on their shoulders.
However, the main cause is: the human being's need to feel important.
And what does this have to do with the fear of making mistakes?
That people will use your mistakes to try to manipulate you with your worth and also their own need for importance will lead them to try to denigrate you when you make them.
In a world where everyone wants to feel important in one way or another, even if you don't do anything extraordinary, if you can make someone feel less than you and behave that way, you will automatically be in a position of power in that relationship. And what better way than to denigrate others when they make mistakes?
And if you want a person to stop doing something, what better way than to tell them that if they are wrong in what they do, it is because they are inept? That is, make them believe that if they do something wrong, they will lose their worth.
And this can be both consciously and unconsciously. Many times people who have lived in environments with parents or close people who did this type of thing with them, end up feeling insufficient and seeking validation by making others feel bad or adopting manipulative behaviors.
It's an easy way to feel special or get what you want and requires very little effort. The problem is that these types of attitudes explode very easily in the face of those who use them and can have serious consequences. But that is a subject for another post.
What I mean is that this is the basis for people taking advantage of the mistakes of others to scoff, trying to make them see that it indicates something about their worth, resulting in that for most people making mistakes is a sensitive issue.
In addition, another important aspect of being wrong is that it can have consequences that must be dealt with. Something you want to do can go right or wrong for you. And if it do go wrong there are things you may have to deal with. Those are the typical situations where people don’t stop wondering: What if X thing happens? What if this other thing happens?
Those are situations in which I want you to think about the famous phrase: "those who will not risk cannot win" The phrase is really interesting. Because something that people don’t tend to realize is that: when you do not risk, you are already losing.
You are already failing to get something you want. You are living below what you want your reality to be and for fear of "making a mistake" you are letting it remain that way.
Begin to face your "mistakes" not as signs of ineptitude, or as messengers of pain but as events that were necessary to learn certain lessons that are important to know in this life. And of course, try not to do them again.
