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Whether it’s in our work environment or our relationships, every single one of us makes mistakes at some point. Life inevitably throws curveballs to give us valuable learning opportunities. They may hit us hard at first, but what matters more than any misstep or its magnitude is our response afterward.
To learn more about our tendency to make mistakes and how much of a toll they take on our emotional health, we reached out to Joshua Klapow, Ph.D., a psychologist and creator of Mental Drive. He started this well-being initiative to help people access the best-in-class psychological and performance tools to live healthier, more fulfilled, and successful lives.
"We are social beings," Klapow told Bored Panda. "We are hardwired to seek acceptance. When we do things that put us at risk of rejection, the natural emotional response is one of embarrassment, fear, stress, and frustration. This is who we are at the deepest levels."
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The psychologist pointed out that when we make a mistake, it can be hard initially to accept it. "We may know intellectually that we have made an error but emotionally, we are triggered to figure out how to make that mistake not be a reality."
Some of the most common tactics we use to justify our actions are generating reasons why the mistake isn’t actually a mistake, reducing the magnitude of the mistake down to its smallest existence, and blaming the error on the action of others rather than ourselves. "All done to shield the reality that we have done something wrong."
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As you can see from the examples in this list, sometimes living with our errors can be extremely hard. Not only do they damage our pride and self-confidence, but they can also turn into downright personal disasters and the biggest regrets we carry through life.
When asked what kind of toll these errors in judgment have on well-being, Klapow explained their impact on our mental state often depends on how we regard the mistake. "The interpretation can literally change the emotional impact of that mistake," he told us. "If we see mistakes as a chance to learn something, to gain insight, to have a way to do things differently next time, then the mistake has a far less negative impact."
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Well, we’ve heard a million times that every mistake is a lesson to be learned: they are "a portal to learning, growth, and mastery." It's safe to say that facing our blunders is hard and often scary, but making them can be beneficial. It all depends on the perspective.
The healthiest way to tackle mistakes, as Klapow mentioned, is to look at our behaviors whenever we stumble and fall, take notes, and accept this learning opportunity. If we take action and make sure we’re not constantly beating ourselves up about it, we come out as stronger and more resilient human beings.
But how often do we see them as growing experiences? While this varies from person to person, some people refuse to accept reality and get tangled in their failures, unable to continue with their lives.
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"If we continually make mistakes, don’t see them as a learning opportunity, or are in a position where we are not able to ever succeed, our self-confidence takes a significant beating," Klapow added. To move forward from this emotional state, the creator of Mental Drive offered these suggestions:
- Find meaning in the mistake from a learning perspective
- Recognize and remind yourself that perfection is not how people live or grow
- Evaluate the mistakes relative to other mistakes you have made so that each mistake is not seen as "the worst", and learn that mistakes are frequent and not always catastrophic.
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But this does beg the question, can hearing about the blunders others made help us avoid the same mistakes in our personal lives? "Because mistakes have an automatic and deep emotional impact, we have a tendency to think that we are the only ones who make them," the psychologist said.
"Seeing other people in the same situation making the same mistakes helps us to reality test, helps us feel not as bad or alone in the mistake, and often helps us see someone else taking a mistaken action that we then can learn not to take when a similar situation arises," Klapow concluded.