When we spend so much time trying to do everything right, be everything right for someone and use all our mental energy to design a life that avoids making mistakes, chances are the avoidance of getting it wrong will come back to bite us.
We have been raised in a society that values product over process. It values speed over accuracy. When the focus is all about the product and how quickly it could be produced there’s bound to be mistakes.
However, with the rise of machines and AI one can cut corners and avoid mistakes. Who needs humans when you have a robot to do it for you, right?
I always berated myself and told myself I should be a robot. By being a robot, I could avoid making people uncomfortable from my emotions, become more productive by not having emotions and I could master achieving accuracy and speed at the same time in everything I did.
This was what I thought would make it possible for me to be perfect and perform perfectly for everyone. All I had to do was just not be my human self. But the mental and physical stress I put myself through trying to be perfect for everyone, do it right according to outside influences was slowly breaking me down.
Rather than stop and address the challenges, I pushed through. By pushing through I hurt myself further. I also made much greater mistakes while trying to maintain a sense of perfection in everything and not giving myself a break.
It’s not sustainable to avoid getting things wrong all the time. It is also not sustainable to be right all the time.
Humans should find a sense of ease and gratitude with getting it wrong, being imperfect, and wildly raw in our self-expression.
When we “mess up” or make a mistake we often learn from it.
We can learn from our mistakes even more when we make peace with ourselves and the mistake.