We’ve all made errors. As much as we hate to admit it, errors often lurk in our past attempting to keep us from creating our absolute best art. Novelist James Joyce once said:
A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.
In order to overcome excessive obsession with our errors, we have to learn how to transition our mistakes into opportunities. In his book, The Musicians Way, Gerald Klicstien shares three assets of making errors:
1. Errors Are Not Failures – Failure is a lasting loss. Errors are not permanent unless we give them permission to be so. As much as errors try to be more than errors, we have to keep them in perspective.
2. Errors Are Not Shameful – Errors only become shameful if we allow them to live with us and do not move past them. Shame says that we’ve placed our value in our art and not in who we’ve been created to be. When we believe our errors change our value or cause us to be inferior, we’ve forfeited our true identity for a counterfeit. Errors tells us what we need to learn, not who we are or who we should be. We need to use our errors to make us better.
3. Errors Are Information – Once we move past the emotion and negativity of an error, we can then clearly see that errors provide data. Errors, in their natural form, have no emotion – but as artists, we often project emotion on our errors. When this happens, we devalue the data that is waiting to be discovered.
As artists, we tend to agonize over our mistakes rather than using them to make ourselves better. We need to make sure that we’re leveraging our errors, not giving them strongholds over our lives, emotions, or ability to produce. We are more than our errors or successes.
Thank you for writing this. Well said!
I just do not let them get me down. I just think of them as one step in getting me closer to the correct and favorable outcome.
TOTALLY AGREE ADAM!!!
Thanks man. I’ve need to hear this so bad recently. New job as the boss, and I seem to mess something up every week. Thanks for continued perspective on this.
Mitch, It takes 12 months to find your legs. Then an additional 9-12 months to get comfortable with your legs. Then you start to see your swagger return and your ability to lead and influence impact. Believe in you and praying for you man. I know you are going to KILL IT!
Thanks bro. It’s not helping that I decided to change so many things, and my promotion was included in bunch of other organizational changes. Nice to know it takes longer than I expected.
So true.
It’s amazing how easy it is to give errors strongholds in our lives, I’m so guilty of that. Love this post, what a fantastic reminder!