There seems to be no middle ground when it comes to mistakes.
Most people I come across either think that mistakes are frequent and inevitable… Or they believe that they can be eliminated and should never be tolerated.
As with just about everything, it’s not that black and white. If we want to nurture a healthy relationship with mistakes then we’ve got to wade into the less comfortable shades of grey…
Let’s assume for the moment that you accept it’s not a hopeless case. That there are plenty of actions you can take in order to relegate mistakes to mere infrequent inconveniences.
[If you absolutely can’t swallow that idea, then go and read up on deliberate practice before proceeding further…]
Once people are past the ‘hopeless’ stage there’s a tendency to swing to the other extreme.
A common claim that I hear is: “Amateurs practice until they can get it right. Professionals practice until they can’t get it wrong.”
That’s a lovely thought (and it’s spot on about the fact that doing something successfully once is merely the start of your practice journey). But there are dangers when you take “can’t get it wrong” at face value.
No amount of practice can get you to the situation where it’s literally impossible to make a mistake.
Frankly, this is the case even in normal conditions (we’ll talk more about this in a bit). But if your instinct is to claim that this could never happen to you, then we can always test that by making the conditions more challenging.
What happens if you’re feeling tired… If an illness is causing you serious pain… If there are interfering spectators… Or equipment failures…
Are any of those enough to allow the possibility of mistakes to creep into something you’d normally expect to be flawless?
And if you still maintain that could faze you (in which case, I don’t believe you 😉) then we can keep raising the stakes until mistakes are guaranteed.
Bring on the earthquakes. What about a volcanic eruption? If we need to, we can even go as far as rampaging mutant space aliens with blaster guns.
To disprove the claim that mistakes are ‘impossible’ I only need to spot one mistake. And I can make the conditions as extreme as I like.
And once we know that mistakes are always possible then you realise that you can’t pinpoint exactly where the critical line comes. It’s not as simple as saying that the presence of gun-toting aliens means mistakes are possible but any other situation allows you to declare them impossible again.
It’s always a sliding scale.
When your practice is impeccable and the conditions are great then the chance of mistakes can become minuscule. But it never gets as low as zero.
When it comes down to it, accepting this conclusion is really no big deal. It’s simply admitting that human beings are fallible. And surely no-one would argue with that statement.
So why is it so hard to do?
I think we get into a state where we’re constantly bargaining about what that really means.
The first level is thinking that we’re somehow special. When we believe that we should be able to eliminate mistakes completely we’re essentially saying “Yes. Of course human beings in general are fallible… But I’m different.”
We hope that as long as the human race as a whole sticks to the observed behaviour of the past thousands of years (where people are getting things wrong all the time) then we might be given a free pass to be that one exception who can escape that fate (without affecting the overall average).
A little bit of reflection should be enough to convince you that doesn’t hold up.
You’re human. All humans are fallible. So you’re always going to make some mistakes — no matter how hard you practice.
The deeper level of bargaining is over what mistakes we make…
We think, “Yes, of course I can see how it’s possible that I’d make mistakes on something difficult — or in extreme circumstances. But this was a really easy thing and the conditions were perfect! I should never have made this particular mistake!”
This ‘logic’ is equally flawed.
If you’re only allowed to make mistakes on “hard” things then you could theoretically eliminate mistakes altogether by never attempting anything difficult. Or by practising until the difficult things became “easy” for you.
But we’ve already agreed that we can never eliminate mistakes entirely. So that leaves us with the unwelcome but inescapable conclusion that we must be able to make mistakes anywhere — even in the places where we feel we shouldn’t.
The only way to avoid that conclusion would be to go back to believing that we ought to be able to eliminate mistakes entirely.
I’ll say it again.
Human beings are just fallible. End of. No way around it. Deal with it.
We’ve arrived at a fundamental and important truth: mistakes are unavoidable.
But the truth — however pure — can be harsh. It can quench motivation and enthusiasm even while it’s the key to ascending to greater levels of performance.
So let’s briefly see if we can find a way that you’re not simply resigned to having to accept something highly undesirable…
Let’s see if there’s a way to soften the blow to your ego so that you’ll actively choose to embrace this new perspective rather than treating it like that awkward relative you’d rather give the widest of berths but have to hug for forms sake.Â
One helpful insight is that mistakes provide valuable information which you can’t get any other way.
All feedback is useful. But success tells you very little. It just says this one thing worked exactly as it is. Nothing about which areas could or should be better. It doesn’t even let you know whether ‘better’ is in fact a possibility at all.
But ‘failure’, while potentially painful, is a much more information-rich source of data. It gives you way more actionable and testable insights than success ever does.
Every mistake is a chance to learn. If squeak by without any flaws one time (because you got lucky. Or whatever) then any underlying fragilities are still present — undetected and unaddressed. But you’ve missed an opportunity to improve.
When you see things that way, you might even start to welcome the odd mistake…
Mistakes also allow you to push the boundaries.
If your aim is simply to keep the number of mistakes you make to a minimum then the only way to do that is to operate well short of your maximum capabilities.
It’s holding back rather than going for it. Playing ‘not to lose’ rather than playing to win.
You might feel good about keeping the number of errors down. But your ultimate result will be ‘mediocre with minimal errors’ when you could have had ‘outstanding plus a few mistakes along for the ride’.
You’re quite deliberately and directly limiting your potential upside.
There are a few areas where a mistake can have genuinely devastating consequences. If you’re operating in one of those, then playing it safe may be the best option. But for most of us, people notice and remember the good things far more than the slips.
So making a reasonable number of mistakes is usually something you should see as a positive! It’s a sign that you’re giving yourself the chance to perform at your full potential rather than restricting yourself.