Making mistakes is a part of life and everyone makes mistakes. We as humans are bound to make mistakes, to err is human is the phrase that gets tossed around frequently and will always hold true. So should we as humans be punished for making mistakes or taking risks?
In general no, we shouldn’t be.
Obviously, certain jobs and situations require almost no mistakes to be made. Jobs that deal with human lives or important infrastructure have higher punishments for mistakes. But I am not here to talk about those as the people in those positions will know the associated risks and potential mistakes that they need to be on the watch for.
So what mistakes am I talking about? The ones I am talking about are ones that we make every day. If you look at all the mistakes you made so far today, this week, this month, etc. you will probably feel sad and depressed. Why? What is so wrong with making a mistake?
So you dressed casually when you had a big meeting you forgot about, what’s the big deal? You accidentally bought the wrong ingredient for that bomb ass pasta dish you were going to make, can you not make a good meal without it? You accidentally forgot a minus sign or used a wrong word in your language class, does that mean you’re stupid?
All of these happen so much that if you got upset every time they happened you would go insane. So you dressed improperly, instead of beating yourself up over it, take a deep breath and don’t worry, next time have an extra suit in your office or in your car. Improvise when you buy the wrong ingredient, sometimes you can’t even get the right ingredient because of where you live.
And finally, when you mistake in class remember that it’s alright. Making mistakes allows you to learn from them. Recently I have been working through some problems involving inflation and I kept messing up because I wasn’t handling conformal time (a way to handle time in cosmology) properly. I showed my work to someone (on an online physics forum) and someone pointed out my mistake and I was able to continue and finish the problem. I learned a lot from my mistake. This is common and isn’t something to be ashamed of. Even the smartest and most successful people in the world make mistakes.
So you made a mistake, what should you do about it? If you can’t fix it yourself what do you do? You ask for help. This is a difficult concept for many. Many of us are wrongly taught that asking for help is wrong. This is backwards and will cause you difficulty in the future. If I didn’t ask for help on solving the problems on inflation I mentioned earlier it would have taken me days or even weeks to find the mistake. Instead, I was able to solve it in a few hours. Why hamstring your learning when you can move ahead with a little guidance?
Now I am not saying that as soon as things are difficult or as soon as you hit a roadblock or make a mistake that you should go running for help. Try and work through it (unless there is a lot at risk if you don’t get help right way). If after a few hours or a day or two you can’t figure things out, then you should go get help. There isn’t a hard and fast rule to when you should get help just make sure you have given it your all beforehand.
It’s okay to make mistakes and to ask for it, after all, we are social animals who thrive in group settings where we can help each other out.
