#spirituality #selfdevelopment #personalitytransformation
The Benefits of Mistakes
A person asks themselves: "Why can Apple make mistakes and release something low-quality, but I can't make mistakes and do something low-quality because I'll be criticized?" But when someone says Apple makes mistakes and they can too, they criticize that company. In the same way, if someone makes mistakes, they also get criticized by someone. There are people who do things wrong (or so they think) – some get criticized, some don’t. It's our internal perception.
For example, I don't see any mistake in Apple releasing glasses. We were just discussing with the team that it was a mistake. But what’s the mistake? What’s the lack of quality? What are the bugs? It's unreal innovation, incredible progress, moving forward. They have an understanding of their path. We have our own understanding of how Apple should develop, which is kind of strange – having our own understanding of the path a company worth $3 trillion should take. Do you really have the power to judge whether it was a mistake? Do you really know the intention of an outsider to evaluate mistakes?
There's something very dangerous that people do: when they say that their mistakes are needed to move forward. When they frame it that way: they don’t say life itself is needed, and they go and live in life. And life has different actions – quality/non-quality, bad/good, mistaken/right, pleasant/unpleasant.
But there's a second insanely bad thing a person can do: to start criticizing and evaluating the "mistakes" of other people, companies, businesses.
When someone says, "He made a mistake, he did it wrong. He’s giving the wrong content. He made a bad video, he made the wrong decision in his business. He read the wrong book, he ate the wrong food, he made the wrong soup..."
Why Is It Important to Make Mistakes?
People criticize others from the standpoint of their own lives and turn these mistakes inside out, on the one hand, trying to justify their own, on the other – highlighting others'.
When someone asks why it's important to make mistakes, they want to justify their own blunder.
If someone asked me: "Do I understand correctly that there are mistaken actions I make? That I might have made the wrong decision at home, at work, in terms of business, some strategy, or some actions? Or I might have made a mistake and added too much salt to the soup, and now it’s oversalted?" – "Of course, people definitely make mistakes," – would be my answer. But if someone seeks confirmation that making mistakes is good because it’s important to learn from your own mistakes or learn by observing others' mistakes, then we need to define the reason and truth behind this question. Why does the person ask such a question? Why do they frame the question this way? They want to justify the actions they’ve taken in life because they're disappointed in their actions.
Disappointment in one’s own actions is a consequence of a lack of love, understanding of oneself, of space, of life. If I have love for myself, freedom in life, love for the space, the events around me, and I trust and understand what’s happening, then when I do something wrong, I just see it.
Is it useful to learn from your mistakes in cooking? There’s no other way to learn, it’s impossible. To cook well, you don’t need a cookbook, you need to feel and understand how to do it. I cook a lot, it’s almost automatic. Can I make mistakes, or have I in the past? Of course, I have, because some things you just can’t guess, can’t understand. Even if you know how to do something – you can still make a mistake: looked the wrong way, had a bad mood, got distracted, or the ingredients were different, salt was saltier than before. Throughout the day, people make a huge number of mistakes.
There are many mistakes, but it’s important not to tell yourself that mistakes are beneficial: that’s delusion and sinking into some kind of mental incomprehensible cause-and-effect connection.
About Perception of Mistakes and Their Causes
In reality, it's not a true connection, but rather a desire to justify certain actions and events as useful. For example, when I was 12 years old, I was running, fell, and broke my arm. It bent the other way, and I still have problems with that arm. Let’s say I called it a mistake, that I was running wrong. We could now start a whole philosophical discussion and say that it was beneficial in my life because it taught me to live in a certain way, to go through some events. No, I would have gladly erased it so I wouldn’t have problems with my arm. I’m not saying that I want it or that it should be done, but if we go into the mode that this was beneficial for me, that would be self-deception: it would have been great to live without a broken arm. There’s a reason why this event happened, and it's much deeper than just me running wrong. Especially since this has affected my entire life, the fact that there’s another deeper reason – that’s a fact.
This event would have happened anyway, it was meant to happen, it had some reason.
Have I learned and gone through some consequences in terms of doctors, healing, or making decisions? Maybe I’ve learned some things, but again, I would have gladly not lived through this event.
About People Who DON'T Learn from Their Mistakes
There are bad events that happen, and people learn nothing from them. They may even deceive themselves by saying it was useful, that it happened, and that’s why they learned. That’s not necessarily true. For example, someone says: "I grew up in a tough family. My childhood was hard: parents hit me a lot, there was fighting in the neighborhood, my mom and dad drank. Going through these life mistakes motivated me to want to make money, and that’s why I came to this result." Learn to see the correct cause-and-effect relationship: the cause of the events that happen lies much deeper. If you were hit as a child, if your parents drank, if you left home early, grew up in a small town, and then moved to Silicon Valley in the USA, started a company, and earned $200 million, the reason for that is only relatively connected to being hit as a child. Most likely, you have a huge number of traumas and other behavioral traits that are the result of being hit, but not the fact that you moved to another country and earned $200 million.
I wouldn't deceive myself like that under any circumstances, the cause lies much deeper. We need this to show that we have strength – as justification; we need it to show that we have power – as justification, rather than just accepting that you’re the kind of person who was meant to move to Silicon Valley and earn $200 million. Isn’t it cooler to say to yourself: "I’m just the kind of person born with such causes, and in my life, certain effects will happen that will make me a very wealthy person." I think that’s a more pleasant cause-and-effect chain than saying, "I was hit as a child, I was starving, my parents were alcoholics, and that’s why I became rich." Isn't it more pleasant?
But somehow people project their mistakes this way. And mistakes are just actions we’ve called by that word. That’s why someone might like the soup that wasn’t oversalted, and for someone else – it wasn’t salted enough. There will always be someone who will say this. Even if it was oversalted, there will be someone who likes how the soup was salted. If it was very heavily salted – most likely no one will like it. That’s why mistakes are just some of our feelings about how things should be, whether something was done right or wrong. Especially when we call it mistakes in life: "I made a mistake, I married the wrong woman. That’s why I’ll have something new, I had to live through this in life. I’ll get through it, and I’ll be happy." I have no idea.
State of Personal Observation
When diagnosing your own mistakes or someone else’s, when you're in a state of criticism or judgment of yourself or another person, you need to enter a state of personal observation – to look at yourself from the outside.
It's easy for us to criticize and judge another person, and it’s hard when they do it to us, especially when we go into defense mode. You need to put yourself in observation: “Did I just criticize from someone else’s perspective? Did I just lower myself? Am I justifying myself? Am I justifying someone else’s mistakes and actions from their point of view?”
There are parents who always criticize, and parents who always praise, even when you’re in the wrong. I’m talking about extremes and out-of-touch behavior, perception.
I have an interesting situation in life. My mom always praises other people. No matter what happens, in any circumstances, I’ll definitely be the last. If it’s about my sister, she’ll definitely be the last. And my wife’s mom always praises my wife. No matter what happens – I’ll definitely be the last, no matter what happens – my wife will always be first. When I say “no matter what happens” – it means I do bad or really good and right actions, and my wife does the same. It’s a very good state for observation, because there, for many of you, including myself, lies a very deep root of attention beyond our relationship to other people. And listening to other people from the standpoint of praise, and acceptance, and judgment, and perception, and from our view of all other people. If this happens constantly – it’s very hard to deal with. Take a close look at this: at your own relationships in your family, with close people, and definitely with your parents.