What Does “Learning from Mistakes” Mean? Principles for Benefiting from Them

AVAlexander Volchek

Someone asks themselves, for example, “Why can Apple make mistakes and release something of poor quality, while I, as a person, can't make mistakes or do something poorly because I'll be criticized?” But when someone says, “Apple makes mistakes, and it's allowed to,” they're criticizing Apple. In exactly the same way, when a person makes mistakes, someone criticizes them too. There are people who make mistakes—or decide they've made a mistake. Some people criticize them, and others don't. It's our own inner perception. For example, I don't see any mistake in Apple releasing its glasses. We were just sitting with the team discussing that it was a mistake. What was the mistake? Where's the lack of quality? What are the bugs? It's an incredible innovation, unbelievable progress, a step forward. They have some understanding of their own path. From the outside, we have our own understanding of how Apple should develop. In general, it's strange to have your own idea of how a company worth three trillion dollars should develop. Do you really have the capacity to assess that? Was it a mistake or not? Do you really know someone else's intention well enough to judge their mistakes?

There's a very dangerous thing a person can do. One dangerous thing is saying they need their own mistakes to move forward—framing their position that way, instead of saying, “I need life itself. I'm moving through life and living.” Life contains all kinds of actions: good-quality, poor-quality, bad, good, mistaken, not mistaken, pleasant, unpleasant—all sorts of words, adjectives, descriptions, whatever you like. But there's a second, incredibly bad thing a person can do: start criticizing, judging, and pointing out other people's mistakes. Other people, companies, businesses. Saying, “They made a mistake. They're doing it wrong. They're putting out the wrong content. They made a misguided video. They made the wrong decision in their business. They read the wrong book, ate the wrong food, made the wrong soup.” Criticizing other people in terms of their lives. Turning those mistakes inside out, trying to justify their own on the one hand and highlighting other people's on the other. In this video, we'll examine these sides of mistakes, and the mistakes you don't make. Most importantly, at the end I'll lead you toward how to act.

When someone asks why it's important to make mistakes, they want to justify their own mistakes. So the question concerns our lives. For example, I'd ask, “Am I right in understanding that some things I do are mistakes? Am I right in thinking I could have made a wrong decision at home? Am I right in thinking I could have made a wrong decision at work? Am I right in thinking I could have made a wrong decision in business, in some strategy or some actions? Or I could have made a mistake, added too much salt to the soup, and made it too salty.” Of course a person can make mistakes. That's how I'd answer. But if someone asks, “Could I get confirmation that making mistakes is good? After all, it's important to learn from your own mistakes, for example, or to learn to observe mistakes,” then you need to keep looking at the reason for that question and the truth behind it. Why is the person asking it? Why does their question take this form? They want to justify the things they do in life because they're disappointed in their own actions. Disappointment in your own actions follows from a lack of love, of understanding yourself, the world around you, and life. If I have love for myself, freedom in life, love for the world around me and the events happening in it, and I trust and understand what's happening, then if I've done something wrong, I simply see that I've done it wrong.

Is it useful to learn from your mistakes in cooking? You can't learn any other way. It's impossible. To cook well, what you need isn't a cookbook; you need to feel and understand how to do it. I cook a lot. Some kind of automatic mechanism is at work. Can I make a mistake, or have I made mistakes? Of course I have, because sometimes you can simply miss the mark, guess wrong, or misunderstand. Even when you know how to do something, you can make a mistake. You looked in the wrong place, weren't in the right mood, turned away, or got a different kind of vegetables, fruit, meat, anything. Just a different kind. You didn't fully realize it and made a mistake. The salt was saltier than the previous salt. It happens very often: the salt is simply saltier than the last one. A person can make an enormous number of mistakes during a day. There are many, but it's important not to tell yourself that mistakes are useful. That's a delusion, sinking into some obscure mental chain of cause and effect. It isn't a real chain of cause and effect. It's like wanting to justify certain actions and events: “This is useful.” For example, when I was twelve, I was running, fell, and broke my arm. It twisted the other way, and I still have a problem with that arm.

Suppose I called that a mistake. Say, that I was running the wrong way. We could launch a whole philosophical discussion and say it was useful in my life because it taught me to live in a certain way and go through certain events. No, I'd happily erase the whole thing so I wouldn't have a problem with my arm. I'm not saying I want that or that it should be done. But if we switch to saying it benefited me, that would be self-deception. It would have been great without a broken arm. There's a reason this event happened, and that reason goes much deeper than my running the wrong way, especially since it's stayed with me throughout my life—my entire life. The fact that there's another cause is a fact. The cause lies much deeper in this event, so it would have happened anyway. It had to happen. There was some cause behind it. Am I learning? Did I go through certain consequences of the fracture, doctors, I don't know, or making decisions? I probably learned some things, but again, I'd happily have gone without experiencing that event.

Bad events happen, and a person actually learns nothing from them. They may even deceive themselves, saying, “It was useful that this happened to me, and that's how I learned.” That's not a given at all. For example, someone says, “I grew up in a difficult family. I had a hard childhood. My parents beat me a lot, I got beaten up in the neighborhood, my parents drank. After going through these mistakes in life, having nothing to eat, I wanted to earn money, and that motivated me to earn money. That's why I reached a different result.”

Then they reached a different result. Learn to see the right chain of cause and effect, the real, true chain of cause and effect. The cause of events like these lies much deeper. If you were beaten as a child, your parents drank, you left your family early, were born in a small town, then moved to the United States, to Silicon Valley, built a startup, and earned two hundred million dollars, the reason you moved to Silicon Valley and earned two hundred million dollars has only a very tenuous connection with being beaten as a child. More likely, you have an enormous number of traumas and other behavioral characteristics that result from being beaten. Moving to another country and earning two hundred million dollars isn't the result of that. I certainly wouldn't deceive myself that way. The cause lies much deeper. We need this to show we have strength. It's a justification. We need it to show we have power. It's a justification. Instead of simply accepting that you're the kind of person who was meant to move to Silicon Valley and earn two hundred million dollars. After all, it's much better to say to yourself, “I'm simply that kind of person. I was born with these causes, and effects will unfold in my life that will make me a very wealthy person.”

To me, that's a more pleasant chain of cause and effect than “I was beaten and went hungry as a child, and my parents were alcoholics, so I became wealthy.” It's more pleasant, isn't it? But for some reason, when it comes to mistakes, a person projects them in that direction. Mistakes are simply actions we've given that name. We just called them that. That's precisely why one person likes soup that isn't oversalted, while another says it needs more salt. There's always someone who says the soup needs more salt. If it's heavily oversalted, there usually aren't people like that, but even when it's heavily oversalted, there's usually still someone who says, “I like it salted that way.” If it's extremely salty, maybe no one will like it. So mistakes are a certain feeling we have: should it be this way or not? Was this done correctly or incorrectly? Especially when we call them mistakes in life. “I made a mistake. I married the wrong woman, so I'll have a new wife. I had to go through this in my life. I'll get through it, move forward, and find happiness.” Well, I really don't know. When diagnosing your own mistakes or other people's, while criticizing or making judgments about yourself or someone else, you need to enter a state of observing yourself.

Looking at myself from the outside, without attachment to myself. Because it's easy for us to criticize, assess, and judge another person, and hard when others do it to us, especially when we become defensive. You need to observe: “Was I just criticizing that other person from the outside? Was I just belittling myself from the outside? Am I justifying myself from the outside? Am I justifying another person's mistakes and actions from the outside?” Anyone watching this video will find an example. There are parents who criticize you all the time. There are parents who always praise you, even when you're at fault. I'm talking about extremes and inappropriate behavior, inappropriate perception. I have an interesting situation in my life. My mother always praises other people. Whatever happens, I'll definitely come last. Whatever happens, under any circumstances, I'll definitely come last. If it's about my sister, she'll definitely come last. My wife's mother always praises my wife. Whatever happens, I'll definitely come last there. Whatever happens, my wife will always come first. When I say “whatever happens,” I mean whether I do bad things or very good, right things, and whether my wife does bad things or very good, right things.

This is a very good state to observe, because for many of you, including me, it contains a major root worth paying attention to in how we go on to relate to others and hear them: in terms of praise and acceptance, assessment and judgment, and our own perception of everyone else. When this happens constantly, it's very hard to deal with. Look at it closely. Look at your own attitudes within your family, with the people close to you. And definitely with your parents. Forward this video to everyone: people you judge, people you praise, people you want to reflect reality back to. And simply to support my channel. That's always very helpful. Subscribe and like. See you next time!