5 Reasons To Love Being Wrong
Raise your hand if you hate being wrong or making a mistake.
OK, you can put your hand down now.
Don't worry. You're not alone. Most people walk around with a crippling fear of being perceived as wrong or making a mistake.
If you fail your first interview, you believe you're destined to be jobless forever.
If you don't convert your first prospect, you believe you're never going to land a client.
If the first person you have a crush on rejects you, you think you're going to die alone.
If you look around, you'll be shocked to see how many people live out their lives in mediocrity because they're afraid of being wrong.
Just imagine that you were the person tasked with inventing the electric bulb. The entire human race is depending on you to create the device that will change the way they live forever. They'll finally be able to read books at night without having to keep burning candle after candle.
And you give up because the first prototype you came up with didn't work.
Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? If your aim is to invent the electric bulb, you wouldn't care if you failed once, twice or a hundred times (which is almost exactly how it really happened).
And yet, you apply this ridiculous thinking to your own life all the time!
- Did you end up marrying the first person you had a crush on? NO.
- Did you choose your dream job when you were 9 years old? NO.
- Was your first business idea the one that made you a success? NO.
Then why would you be afraid of being wrong?
So, now that we've established that being wrong isn't a problem, let us take a look at why being wrong and making mistakes is actually incredibly beneficial.
1. It shows that you're on the path to progress.
When you look back at some decisions you made 10 years ago, don't they feel stupid now? Well, congratulations! That means you've actually grown and gotten better as a person. If you never put yourself in a position to make mistakes, you're stuck in the terrible illusion of the comfort zone.
Growth requires you to make mistakes. If you're not wrong about things often, you're not challenging yourself enough.
2. It empowers you to take action because you realize that your first choice is often wrong.
We've already gone through a laundry list of situations where your first choice or decision turns out to be the wrong one. What can you learn from this?
Take action!
Since the only way you realized that your first choice was the wrong one was by taking action and making another choice, it is obvious that taking regular action is the best road to progress.
3. It allows you to refine your goals.
When you set out to “look better” or “be wealthier”, you're setting yourself up to fail over and over again. What's worse is that these are moving, intangible targets and there's a very small possibility of you ever hitting them.
If you're failing to make progress on one of your goals, it is because you haven't defined it clearly enough. For example, it is much easier to make progress towards “losing 5 pounds” than it is towards “looking better”. It is much easier to make progress towards “getting two new clients” than it is towards “being wealthier”.
Learn from your mistakes. Refine your goals to set yourself up for success.
4. It allows you to build true, unshakable confidence.
You know how you feel unsure when you make decisions or make definitive statements about things?
That's because you don't have confidence. And not the machismo-bravado variety of confidence.
I'm talking about real, true, feel-it-in-your gut confidence. The kind that you don't have to fake. The kind that leaders and charismatic people seem to exude naturally.
You know how you get that confidence? By failing. A lot.
When you fail or make mistakes, you're actually increasing your data set. You are now more knowledgeable about the problem you're trying to solve. When you've exhausted a bunch of options and found the one that works, you can be confident. Because you've been in the thick of things and you know what works and what doesn't
5. Expecting mistakes is not the same as pessimism.
You will make mistakes. This is guaranteed. As surely as the sun rises in the east, you will continue to be proven wrong about things.
So if you're going to succeed with this knowledge, you have to change your perspective.
Embrace fully the idea that you will succeed, but it may not be in the way you think right now. The method or strategy that you're using currently may not be the one that ultimately gets you to your goal.
That's perfectly fine because you're going to go in with the willingness to adjust. Expect to win, but accept that you'll have to change and refine your process along the way.
As a creative professional or aspiring entrepreneur, the willingness to be wrong is crucial. You have to leave no stone unturned in your quest for success. If you're ready to make mistakes and keep going nonetheless, you will be unstoppable.
When we were first creating the product that eventually became Dubsado, we went through a lot of trial and error. We had to change and rethink a lot of our approach. But we persevered, adjusted and applied our new knowledge in constructive ways. This is the reason we're so confident that Dubsado is the best tool for automating your business processes.