In today’s episode I talk about the fact that mistakes are the price of all progress. At an early age we often learn to be afraid of mistakes and the sense of embarrassment that we often feel for not being perfect.
The truth is that mistakes are a crucial part of the human experience and can be the accelerator that moves us toward what we most value in life.
Transcript
Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Once again, welcome aboard friends to the daily podcast.
Speaker:Hope you're doing well.
Speaker:Thanks for tuning in always great to have a little bit of time
Speaker:with everybody and as always.
Speaker:Hoping to bring you a little bit of encouragement and value today.
Speaker:We're going to talk today again.
Speaker:About one of my real current favorite.
Speaker:So I'm getting so much out of the work of Alfred Adler.
Speaker:I first came across his book.
Speaker:When I was, I was thinking I was in Nashville.
Speaker:And I was running every day.
Speaker:And I was listening to an audio book, uh, sort of expanding Adlerian psychology.
Speaker:As you do.
Speaker:Most people just listen to.
Speaker:Listen to something else when they run.
Speaker:But I was listening to, uh, uh, an in-depth analysis of Adlerian psychology.
Speaker:I really like what he does.
Speaker:I think what Adler does so well is, uh, I put so much responsibility.
Speaker:For our lives back on ourselves and really confronts us with.
Speaker:What we believe and what we say to ourselves.
Speaker:I think so much of our modern modern culture is obsessed with victim status.
Speaker:And with blaming all sorts of other external entities for any unhappiness
Speaker:that we might encounter, whereas Adler.
Speaker:Basically puts everything back on us and I've got a great quote from him today.
Speaker:It just jumped off the page at me, and I really wanted to share it with you.
Speaker:It's a, it's going to resonate with every single one of us.
Speaker:And I think it's really quite encouraging.
Speaker:So listen to this.
Speaker:He says, what do you first do when you learn to swim?
Speaker:You make mistakes.
Speaker:Do you not, and what happens?
Speaker:You make other mistakes.
Speaker:And when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning.
Speaker:And some of them many times over, what do you find?
Speaker:That you can swim.
Speaker:Well, life is just the same as learning to swim.
Speaker:Do not be afraid of making mistakes for there is no other
Speaker:way of learning how to live.
Speaker:I think that's a brilliant metaphor.
Speaker:I mean, all of us, I would imagine listening to this can swim.
Speaker:You know, we've got to, we've got a great pool here at the house and
Speaker:I've still got three young kids and I can remember the process.
Speaker:By which, uh, they learned to swim, you know, you just sort of step
Speaker:by step and you know, it's not as even, you may have heard this before
Speaker:that, you know, a kid sort of tries to swim the first time figures out
Speaker:that they can't and says, that's it.
Speaker:I'm never going to swim.
Speaker:I'm never going to actually do this because I did try
Speaker:it once and it didn't work.
Speaker:You know, as kids, whether it's learning to walk, whether it's learning to
Speaker:swim, whether it's learning to speak.
Speaker:If you think about it, it's just a series, a often, a long series of mistakes.
Speaker:Of doing the completely wrong thing and slowly getting feedback
Speaker:and figuring out what doesn't work and moving progressively forward.
Speaker:Uh, there's another thing in life that you can think about school golf.
Speaker:Golf is basically just one great big laboratory of failure.
Speaker:Even at the highest levels.
Speaker:I've got a brother who plays off plus two.
Speaker:If you're not familiar with golf, it just means, you know, A lot of people
Speaker:will turn pro around, off scratch or plus one, he buys off plus two.
Speaker:So, uh, you know, and, and he will just constantly.
Speaker:At least in his own mind, be making mistakes and getting frustrated
Speaker:with himself and tweaking it.
Speaker:Always in pursuit.
Speaker:No doubt of the perfect round.
Speaker:So let's put a couple of things in place here.
Speaker:A lot of psychologists argue that one of the most important things in a human life.
Speaker:Is a sense of progress.
Speaker:I don't know if you've ever heard of a learned helplessness
Speaker:learned helplessness studies.
Speaker:Originally done on rats.
Speaker:They kind of put rats in this.
Speaker:You know, sort of little cage thing and, and they got zapped.
Speaker:Uh, just, uh, you know, small electric shock and basically what the rats
Speaker:figured out is if they did certain things, they could stop the shocks
Speaker:happening and they would do that.
Speaker:And they tested another bunch of rats and, and this other bunch of rats
Speaker:couldn't do anything to stop the shocks.
Speaker:And they discovered that if they had no sense of control, no
Speaker:sense of progress, no sense of.
Speaker:Being able to change their environment.
Speaker:Then they really got sick and they often died from this thing
Speaker:called learned helplessness.
Speaker:They would even cower in the corner and not do anything.
Speaker:It's a bit of a downer, isn't it?
Speaker:Sorry.
Speaker:I'm not trying to get you upset about live animal experiments.
Speaker:I'm sure these days, none of that sort of stuff happens,
Speaker:but you get the point is this.
Speaker:Stuff we did on learned helplessness.
Speaker:We learned that, you know, when people feel they have no sense of
Speaker:development, growth control, they just give up and kind of just accept
Speaker:that nothing's ever going to change.
Speaker:What we really want in life is some sense of progress.
Speaker:You know, that whenever you've, you've ever been like, you know,
Speaker:trying to get fitter or lose weight or learn a new skill.
Speaker:Really the thing that keeps you going is some sense of progress.
Speaker:You know, that feeling of, I set a goal, I got towards it.
Speaker:I got some progress.
Speaker:So, this has got a lot to do with Atlas theory of mistakes.
Speaker:If you want progress, which is a very psychologically healthy thing to pursue.
Speaker:Then the, the cost of that progress is mistakes.
Speaker:I remember Fred monster talked about it.
Speaker:They had this term school fees.
Speaker:They said it's called school fees.
Speaker:I said, what do you mean?
Speaker:He said, it's.
Speaker:And they said, it's what you pay to learn.
Speaker:So mistakes, they used to call mistakes, school fees because
Speaker:mistakes are what you pay to learn is what you pay to get progress.
Speaker:So in your life at the moment, depending on a whole bunch of
Speaker:parameters, you may have a.
Speaker:I don't know, a tenuous, a tense relationship with mistakes.
Speaker:I think we live in a culture too.
Speaker:Don't we?
Speaker:Where mistakes are kind of, it's impossible to acknowledge them.
Speaker:I look at a lot of what's happening with the government over response
Speaker:to COVID and you just see.
Speaker:An almost complete, inability to admit that.
Speaker:You know, we, we tried something, we got it wrong.
Speaker:We got feedback.
Speaker:We're going to keep working on this.
Speaker:I mean, we very rarely see these days, public figures say, you know what?
Speaker:I got this completely wrong.
Speaker:I'm really sorry.
Speaker:I've learned heaps in the process.
Speaker:So, and I guess some of your listening going well, you know, we have very high
Speaker:expectations of our public officials.
Speaker:I get it.
Speaker:But we also inhabit a culture as a result of that, where mistakes are really hidden.
Speaker:Aren't they they're they're prohibitive.
Speaker:We sort of all get we'll grow up thinking.
Speaker:The worst thing we can do is make a mistake.
Speaker:You know, that'll go way back to our experience at school.
Speaker:You might have had to give a speech or you might've had to do
Speaker:something publicly in front of other students and you got it wrong.
Speaker:And it's not as if the kids in the class say, Hey, Not a problem.
Speaker:You're learning.
Speaker:You're growing.
Speaker:You're progressing.
Speaker:Go ahead.
Speaker:We're not worried.
Speaker:That was a fine mistake.
Speaker:I mean, we learned at a young age don't we hide our mistakes.
Speaker:Don't admit to them.
Speaker:And, uh, but uh, some of us realize that it's the mistakes.
Speaker:It's the failures that slowly move us along.
Speaker:I was watching an interview the other day with Peter Druckenmiller
Speaker:who runs the decane family office.
Speaker:And he's one of the most successful investors.
Speaker:Of the last sort of 20, 30 years.
Speaker:And he talked about just how many mistakes that he made,
Speaker:how many times he bombed out.
Speaker:Um, I like to tell people that, you know, I didn't pick the March, 2020.
Speaker:Equity market collapse.
Speaker:And I sold out some equity positions.
Speaker:Sort of, uh, early and then just missed.
Speaker:Getting back in.
Speaker:And I learned a huge amount from, you know, getting that mistake down and
Speaker:getting in a learning so much from it.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:And I'm sure that if I sat here for a few minutes, I could rattle
Speaker:off an enormous number of other mistakes as we all could have.
Speaker:We'll being really honest.
Speaker:So summary friends, mistakes, or your friend, but qualification.
Speaker:I also heard somebody once say that.
Speaker:You know, mistakes are fine, but always try to make new ones.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So if you keep dating the wrong kind of person or you keep running into the same
Speaker:problem over and over again, we want to be making new mistakes, fresh ones.
Speaker:Mistakes that are moving as progressively forward, rather than ones
Speaker:that are just a case of repetition.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Are you with me?
Speaker:You want to grow?
Speaker:You want to progress, then it's coming at the cost of some mistakes.
Speaker:So don't be too hard on yourself.
Speaker:You know, be hard on yourself.
Speaker:If you were lazy, if you were disinterested, you didn't care.
Speaker:You kind of just.
Speaker:You know, didn't put much of an effort into something that's different,
Speaker:but if you're making mistakes on the road of progress, that is okay.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I remember when I got back from my first major back-end injury.
Speaker:I had a fantastic coach.
Speaker:Fantastic strength coach who really did a lot of great
Speaker:work putting me back together.
Speaker:And I remember that it took eight weeks till I began to
Speaker:approximate correct procedure.
Speaker:For squats and deadlifts.
Speaker:Now, anybody that there'll be some of you listening to this to know what I mean,
Speaker:because you know, squats and deadlifts in a gym are like the rabbit hole of the gym.
Speaker:It's like, you go down that rabbit hole.
Speaker:You don't come out because there's just so much technique.
Speaker:And there's all these purists that are like,
Speaker:Absolutely, you know, rigid on form.
Speaker:But my point is that in this, it took me weeks to learn it.
Speaker:And I learned it through endless mistakes.
Speaker:I learned it through having my chin in the wrong position.
Speaker:I learned it through having my back in the wrong position.
Speaker:I learned it from having my feet in the wrong position.
Speaker:And each time I got feedback, I moved closer to the approximation of the ideal.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So what I want to say to you today?
Speaker:Is, we need two things in life.
Speaker:We need progress.
Speaker:We need progress.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Cause if it ain't moving forward, It's not gone yet.
Speaker:Going backward is not living right.
Speaker:We want to be moving forward.
Speaker:And the way we do that, as well as, you know, clear articulation of
Speaker:what we're trying to do and, um, you know, really being aware and across.
Speaker:What we are doing in life and what we are trying to create for ourselves and others.
Speaker:So we want clarity.
Speaker:That's the first thing.
Speaker:And once we have that clarity, We want to realize that mistakes are going to
Speaker:come and accept them, learn from them.
Speaker:Don't be hard on ourselves, but I guess, you know, the way you do it is
Speaker:you try and make as many as possible.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:I mean, if you think about it, scientifically, if mistakes are
Speaker:the admission to progress, then you'd want to maximize your
Speaker:number of mistakes or at least.
Speaker:Keep making new ones in a regular way and keep trying and keep developing.
Speaker:Keep you.
Speaker:Just new strategies, new approaches.
Speaker:And we will get closer and closer to that progress and those goals
Speaker:that are so important to all of us.
Speaker:All right, friends, that's it for me today.
Speaker:Let's get out there.
Speaker:Let's make some mistakes.
Speaker:Let's get that progress happening.
Speaker:Uh, housekeeping, please make sure you've subscribed.
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Speaker:That would be awesome.
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Speaker:just go to patrion.com type in Jonathan Doyle and any support that you have,
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Speaker:Please share this with some friends.
Speaker:My name's Jonathan Doyle.
Speaker:This has been the daily podcast just for you.
