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Make Mistakes! It's Okay. Really!

When you fall, do you get right back up? Do you learn from your mistake and move on? Or do you kick yourself so hard in the butt that you just mope around for days in your PJs and wonder why you're so miserable? Come on! Get a grip!

Okay, okay, that was uncalled for, but seriously, the more mistakes you make, the more you learn. The more you learn the more you grow and the more likely you'll be a future bright star in the sky.

When you were a young growing child, how were you supposed to know the oven was hot? Or that you can’t put metal in the microwave? Or that when you say something impolite you'll hurt someone's feelings? You would have either experienced these things first hand, or you were taught that these were all things to avoid.

Mistake Anxiety

A constant fact of life is that we all make mistakes. What varies is how we all handle a self-inflicted setback. Some get angry; others get upset, while others encounter the wretched beast known as denial (What mistake? It wasn’t me!).

Just like we mentioned in a previous article: “The Key's in the Hole. Now turn it!”, it’s important to take a chance! If you make a mistake, at least you turned the key and made a valiant attempt. If you were too terrified of turning the key, you never would have known whether you would have been successful or not! And you couldn't have possibly made a mistake to learn from!

I mean, how can you learn without messing up every once in a while? You need to make a mistake to learn. If you did everything perfectly, then you’ll never know the right strategy from the wrong.

Are You a Leader?

Then there’s a whole other set of people who admit to their mistakes, acknowledge that they stumbled, but they go right into contingency mode. I mean, so you screwed up, so what? It’s not the end of the world is it? The Earth will still be in orbit and mosquitoes will still be biting the hell out of your legs. It’s not a question of: “I screwed up, give me pity”, it’s a question of: “Okay, I slipped-up, but this is what I’m going to do about it...”

The best leaders out there are the ones who made the most mistakes but learned from them. The ones that never discovered or acknowledged their faux pas never made it into the business world and never made a difference in their own life, or the world.

Young Toronto Blue Jays starting pitcher Josh Towers went 0-12 last season between Baltimore and its Triple-A club. Last year as the Jays' fifth starter he went 8-1. Quite the turn around from just a year ago! Josh Towers, the winning Jays' pitcher in the last game of the season, said:

"You can't succeed without failing. I failed. I learned a lot from that."

Now go out there and pitch a perfect game in your life. You might fail once. Or twice. Or ten times. But just remember, each failure brings you closer to a glowing success.