Well, a problem with my DSL modem at home has kept me from publishing the entries I have written. So since I couldn’t publish, I kept writing, and you get stuck with one more saying. The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
Mistakes. We all make them. Hopefully we learn from them. If we don’t make mistakes, we never learn. We are all afraid of making mistakes whether they are in our taxes, checkbook, family life, professional life, or just life in general.
The problem is that all too many of us can be so afraid of making a mistake that we never take chances. Now, I’m not talking about gambling, or crossing against the light. I’m talking about not being afraid to live.
I talked the other day about having the courage to become what you know you should be. Am I afraid to approach someone that I could help because I lack courage? Or am I afraid that I will make a mistake and make this person worse?
We all have our fears. Sometimes we can be so afraid of making a mistake that we don’t go very far at all. I have seen that in people taking tests. I remember taking a math test to get a programming job many years ago. I finished the minimum number of questions needed to get the job, but I got them all right. Had I been any more careful, I would not have completed enough at all.
As a computer programmer I made plenty of mistakes. I could sit down and plot out everything ahead of time, trying to list every possible outcome from every possible input. But had I done that, I never would have written any code because I would be taking more time than I had just planning. So I wrote code. I saw as much in my head as I could and I compensated for things as they came up. But yes, there were errors from time to time. But I was not so afraid that I never got anything done.
To live, we have to take chances. We have to be brave enough to overcome our fear of failure. Brave enough to accept our failures, learn from them, and still move ahead.
So go ahead. Make mistakes. But learn from them and move ahead. And keep taking chances.