Quotes of the Day - On Mistake
We all make mistakes. It is impossible to not make mistakes. Only those who do nothing make no mistakes. Consider an old farmer’s advice:
- “Every path has a few puddles.”
- “Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.”
- “Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.”
In the Business Lessons for Entrepreneurs, Mark D. Csordos wrote in one of the chapters about some interesting mistakes made by people:
- Henry Ford forgot to put a reverse gear in his first car.
- Thomas Edison once spent more than $2 million on an invention that proved useless.
- Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson struck out more times than anyone else in the history of the game, over 2,500 times.
- “We don’t like their sound and guitar music is on the way out.” – Decca Recording Company rejecting The Beatles, 1962.
- “This is good sport. But for military, the airplane is useless.” – Ferdinand Foch, Commander in Chief, Allied Forces on the western front, World War I.
- “The television will never archive popularity; it takes place in a semi-darkened room and demands continuous attention.” – Harvard Professor Chester L. Dawes, 1940.
- “We don’t tell you how to coach, so don’t tell us how to make shoes.” A large sporting shoe manufacturer to Bill Bowerman, inventor of the “Waffle” shoe and co-founder of Nike, Inc.
- “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” – Western Union internal memo in response to Alexander graham Bell’s telephone, 1876.
Making mistakes is how we learn things and grow our experience. We tend to learn a lesson more quickly from a mistake than from someone merely giving us advice. Ask any parents how frustrating it is to try to give advice to their teenage kids. It is hard to imagine that a person can learn how to bike without falling once. For this very reason, we teach our youngsters at their grade schools to aim high, be imaginary and be adventurous. If they are going to fail and make small mistakes, let them do so early and not make the bigger mistakes when they grow up. The best startup knows this well and encourages people to try new things. Not all new things will prove to be fruitful, but the more you do and try, the more likely something will eventually come out great and become useful.
There are unfortunately people that would never learn from mistakes. These are the people that you know are largely falling behind. As is commonly said in chess, you can play 1000 games and lost every time in the same way if you never analyze your own game and understand why and how you lost. The smart and successful ones know that the biggest mistake you can make is not learning from your past mistakes. Like Confucius put it, “A man who has made a mistake and doesn’t correct it is making another mistake.”
Mr. Csordos had a nice summary in this topic. “In the long run, we’d rather learn from others’ mistake. If we know that something didn’t work for Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, etc., there’s a good chance it won’t work for me either. I want to learn from their mistakes. You don’t get a badge of courage for the number of times you mess things up, so make as few mistakes as possible.” Learning from others is exactly what inspired Sir Isaac Newton’s famous quote, “If I have seen further… it is by standing upon the shoulder of giants.”
My conclusion: a mistake is simply another way of doing things; it is the response to error that counts. If you agree, you will probably appreciate the following quote from Mr. Kemmons Wilson, the founder of Holiday Inn who once said, “My own success was attended by quite a few failures along the way. But I refused to make the biggest mistake of all: worry too much about making mistakes.”
We can’t avoid mistakes, but we can learn and try to minimize its occurrence. Those who make fewer and lesser personal mistakes in their lifetime and know how to learn from others’ mistakes are most likely the ones that will get ahead!
