Mistakes are more than acceptable

Reject the inevitable, resist reality

“No mud, no lotus.”
–Thich Nhat Hanh

At my last job, a higher-up confidently declared in a team meeting that “mistakes are unacceptable.” Poppycock. Mistakes are more than acceptable.

When you make mistakes taboo, you associate them with shame. Shame feels bad, so you adapt by avoiding the risk of doing and collaborating. It’s simple math: you make fewer mistakes when you take fewer actions. (But You gotta do something.)

Mistakes are acceptable because they are inevitable. When you reject the inevitable, you’re in resistance to reality itself. So where are you living then? In a self-constructed illusion, disconnected from the world as it actually exists. Like, for example, middle management at a SaaS company.

This is why you spend time with children (little humans), because they produce mistakes with glee. Our children show you how to learn without shame. This is also why you spend time with elders, because they’ve earned wisdom from a foreign land you call the past. (Don't be so hard on the past.) Our ancestors show you that the journey to now is paved with mistakes.

Errors are the tax you pay for growth—expensive, necessary, unavoidable. The moment you stop making mistakes is the moment you stop becoming.