Mistakes are encouraged
Many of our concerns stem from dwelling on past errors or fearing future ones. Questions like, “Was ending that relationship the right decision?” or “What if I quit my job and my startup fails?” often plague our thoughts.
A friend who recently abandoned her business after three years expressed admiration for my life, saying, “I admire your commitment. You have the idea, the technical skills, and the support.”
Internally, I scoffed, thinking, “Bullshit! I’m fxxking lost compared to you in my life!” Though she said, “I need to accept that I’m not that passionate about this problem,” she is one of the few people who are willing to give up most of the privilege, from money to visa, for her “not so passionate” passion.
Now, I need to critique myself for two seconds
- Why compare? Comparison is the thief of joy.
- Why frustrates? Making mistakes is always one step further for the next try.
Lots of people told me and my friends, “Yeah…your life is pretty fxxked up. Look at how much time you left with your visa.” This viewpoint assumes that not resolving things before the visa expires equates to failure and that failure is inherently negative.
While I actually think the opposite,
- There is no designated timeline to figure things out.
- Mistakes are good.
- Is there even such a thing as a mistake?
My argument for (1) timeline is because of my values in learning. Learning takes honesty, patience, and courage to walk in your own time zone. Adhering to a prescribed timeline often means conforming to herd mentality rather than achieving genuine understanding. This approach can turn us into anxious students who merely copy answers without grappling with the problems ourselves.
(2) Secondly, who says that making mistakes is necessarily bad?
By definition, mistakes imply something went wrong. Yet, experimentation, a process rich with mistakes, is fundamental to discovery. The advantage of mistakes — or experiments — is that they provide clear indications of what doesn’t work, offering valuable insights for subsequent attempts. This leads to increasingly accurate solutions after multiple iterations. Therefore, the key is to keep trying.
Given only two options, you have a 50% chance of choosing correctly on your first attempt, but life presents us with infinitely more choices. Statistically, it’s almost impossible to always be right initially. If we never experience significant or total failure, it likely means we haven’t truly tried outside our comfort zones. So, why fear attempting new things? Failure should not only be accepted but encouraged.
We often fear making the wrong choices in our careers, relationships, and broader life paths. However, choosing not to decide is also a choice — it means remaining stagnant and not gathering new insights for future decisions.
When architects who built Exploratoriums wanted to engineer things so children could not run inside, Frank Oppenheimer said, “It worried the architects to see children behaving naturally. I think it’s quite wonderful that we don’t mind losing some control.” It’s natural to be wrong, to lose some control, and to make mistakes. It could actually be wonderful!
(3) Lastly, does mistake even exist? Of course, there are some clear moral and legal boundaries, but they aren’t what worries us most of the time. We are hesitant about how to communicate with senior leadership, how to behave in front of a partner’s parents, whether we should confess, or if it is smart to lose our visa, salary, or people’s respect for something else we are passionate about in our life.
Unlike solving calculus problems, there may not be a “right” solution in real-life situations. While we all strive for the optimal solution, complex problems are often context-dependent, and multiple “good” solutions can exist simultaneously without giving a clear objective function. For example, my friend who abandoned her three-year business venture gained a deep understanding of her passions — strong enough to give up significant financial and legal security, yet not enough to pursue it for a decade. That understanding is valuable.
Similarly, those who choose financial and legal security over passion gain some insights into a new lifestyle. This, too, is valuable. The exploring dimensions are different, while superiority for one over another is a mere social or personal judgment.
So, today, I ask myself to let go of those worries and fear. I will try like a motherfucker and fail like an inventor. After all, what is the purpose of discovery? Are we discovering for ourselves, or are we trying to discover only what teachers or society have in mind?
