3 Ways to Be Wrong… the Right Way

The more you fail, the more you succeed

You wish you hadn’t made all those mistakes. You wish you could go back and replay the match. You wish everything had been plain sailing.

But you shouldn’t…here’s why.

You are who you are thanks to all those blunders, be grateful. The person reading this article has only been made possible by a series of events that led to this moment and those events include the mistakes, the faux pas and the misjudgements.

Often we think we would be better off by having made the right decision, taking the right action, and foreseeing the right strategy, but that’s a fallacy. Everything you know about yourself, about life, and about others, is a byproduct of those blunders. Without those, you’d be totally blind to reality and immersed in your bubble of entitlement.

When you meet somebody who is a jerk, he’s either not made any mistakes in life or more likely, he is completely oblivious to them.

Errors can be classified into several categories:

Errors of judgment

Sometimes we misread people, situations, or trends. This is easily done. Analyzing a problem in order to make a decision takes a lot of mental effort so, by default, we resort to heuristics — mental shortcuts based on past experiences — some people call this intuition.

In Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, fast and slow, he discusses the two decision-making processes — fast and slow — and points out how often we err on the side of speed just to get it over with and to carry on with our lives.

The old adage “Trust your intuition” is only valid in certain situations and it’s been manipulated by marketers and oil snake salesmen for donkey’s years. The reason you bought that car, chose your partner or vote for X is most likely not only irrational but also misguided. Nature has shaped you in a way that you are quick to make up your mind but very slow to change it, and that can be very costly.

Making mistakes is good. Not learning and readjusting is stupid.

Take politics for example. 50% vote for red and 50% for blue. What are the chances of any of those halves being 100% wrong? About zero? Surely there are good policies, strategies and talent on both sides, yet each side refuses to acknowledge the possibility of the other side having a point. However, how many people ever change their minds? Very few.

This is why it is very important to question everything, especially our deep-held beliefs. If an idea, a decision or a strategy is no longer serving you, clinging on to it is mad. Make errors, but examine the source (your mind) and constantly readjust and stir the right way.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

Albert Einstein

Errors of omission

You never regret what you’ve done, you only regret what you haven’t done

Asking that girl (or boy) out, not traveling when you had the chance, not learning all those things you always wanted to learn, not buying a share of Google, Amazon, Apple, or Bitcoin, etc.

All those things you could have done but didn’t. That was clearly a mistake. Yet, it was a necessary one to make in order to learn. Now you are more open to opportunities, more alert and determined not to let fear dictate your life.

The good thing to realize here is that it’s not too late, it’s never too late. What you’ve seen and experienced so far was just a dry run for what’s coming. Be aware, tame your fears and you’ll be in a great position to take advantage of the new opportunities.

But for that, you have to change your mind.

You are not who you are, you are who you consciously decide to be

Generally speaking, you should be action biased, providing you are not risking anybody’s life. When you take action, you learn, so even if it’s a huge cockup,it still counts as a win. If I could go back in time, I would do more instead of less. That’s my two cents.

Errors of action

On the other hand, we’ve all made mistakes rushing to act. This is known as interventionism.

When you try to fix something that ain’t broken, there is a high probability that it will be broken.

If you think about it, most problems sort themselves out. By interfering, all we do is messing up the healing process.

Your friend made a nasty comment on FB. Let it sink, get some perspective, and in a few days speak to him face to face and try to clear the air.

Knee jerk reactions are usually not a good idea. Think of the consequences before you act.

Complex systems can sort themselves out if you let them. When you have a cold, it’s better to rest and wait it out rather than force-feed your body with antibiotics. When your investment goes down in price, wait, it’ll go back up again. When there is a dictator in the middle east, don’t kill him or you’ll make the situation 1000 times worse.

This last point seems to contradict the one above but it doesn’t. In general, take action when you are in searching mode, but sit in your hands when you are confronted with a problem before you make it worse. I wish somebody had told me this years ago.

How to be less wrong

Ok, you’ve had your fair share of fuckups and you wouldn’t mind getting something right every now and again. Here’s my advice:

• Cultivate awareness. Meditation is by far the best tool to tame your monkey mind. All those worries and regrets not only make you suffer unnecessarily but also impair your ability to see reality for what it is. Your mind is a dirty lens and meditation is the cloth to clean it
• Learn from your mistakes. This seems like a platitude, yet almost nobody practices it. Instead of blaming others, society, your parents, or the government, blame yourself. You are the only culprit. If your life is shit, it’s (in most cases) down to you. Take responsibility and correct your course. Caveat: if you are an orphan, born in the third world with aids, and starving, then I take my word back. But for most of us, entitled little jerks, there is really no excuse. Whatever your life turned out to be is mostly a byproduct of your past decisions. You want to improve your life, change your mindset. You have a lot more power than you think
• Tame fear. Let’s face it. The number one reason stopping you from doing what you want is fear. You can rationalize until the cows come home but deep down you know what you should be doing and you know that only fear it’s stopping you from taking action. Fear will never go away, you have to act now in spite of it, in fact, never do anything unless it scares the shit out of you. When you have no fear, you are too comfortable, and that’s when you throw your life away

Conclusion

Congratulations on all the mistakes that you’ve made so far. You’ll do many more no doubt, but make sure these are exploring mistakes rather than reacting ones.

A mistake is like an investment, let it mature and it will reap rewards eventually, even in unexpected ways. Get out of your own way and let the healing begin.

Have you made any mistakes today? If not, what are you waiting for? Go out there and screw up like there is no tomorrow. Don’t leave any stone unturned, you never know what you might find behind.

Good luck.