Learn from your mistakes
Smallsteps was playing the piano tonight and was getting frustrated as she was trying a new piece and couldn't get it right. This is an area that she struggles with at times, where she become impatient at her own mistakes, and I am trying to teach her that it is part of the process. I told her it is okay to make mistakes and she chimed in,
because that is how you learn!
Yes. But it isn't quite enough.
Making the mistake isn't the lesson, but it provides an opportunity for a lesson to take place. In order to learn from mistakes, it requires a little reflection on what went wrong, but most importantly, it also requires trying again, trying something different. Making the mistake isn't enough, in the same way that learning from other's mistakes doesn't work if we don't make an attempt at all.
Making mistakes is part of life, but we also have to understand what is a mistake because we did it wrong, or what was a mistake because we did it correctly, but the timing wasn't right. We also have to learn that part of the learning is how to get over making a mistake and to try again, not just to correct it, but to build the resiliency to dust ourselves off.
The problem is that a lot of us, myself and Smallsteps included, fear making mistakes, which means that we won't make an attempt, so that we don't get access to the opportunity for a lesson to take place. There are likely many reasons for this including personality, but I know that for me, one of the reasons is that when I was young I knew I didn't have the support in case I fell, so I just didn't try because I couldn't afford the costs. Or at least, I felt I couldn't afford the cost of failure.
This held me back from a lot of things I wanted to try.
Smallsteps is a lot like me, but one thing is different with her, and that is she has parents that are going to support her. Support - not spoil. There is a big difference between being supportive for growth, and being supportive for protection. Some parents will protect their children so much, that they never learn how to fail, never learn the discomforts of the world, never learn how to recover.
It doesn't raise healthy adults.
The lessons don't have to be hard, they just have to be consistent, which requires ramping up challenge to force errors. It is like getting better at anything, where once we have mastered one level, to improve we have to go onto the next. And as said, this process doesn't just improve the target skill like playing the piano, it also builds the group of skills and attitudes around learning anything.
As a parent, watching children go is awesome and often, watching them fail is a bit painful. However, seeing them overcome their failures, seeming them conquer their fears, and seeing them build a skillset that they are proud of, that is their own, that they can apply to their world and make their experience better, is amazing.
It is good to remember though, that we have the opportunity to learn from our mistakes at any age, but what often happens is that as we get older, we try less new, because we become satisfied with what we are now. But are we really satisfied, or are we just still scared of failure?
I know which it is for me.
Taraz
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