If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster; And treat those two imposters both the same …—Rudyard Kipling
While formulating hypotheses, second graders at my school did an activity in which they wrestled with the question of how to eliminate one of the two hypotheses. In the course of the conversation, the idea that a “wrong” answer is just as good as a “right” answer was introduced. (Each can give you exactly the same amount of information.) It is not just a lesson in science and language arts, but a lesson for success in school, in social situations, and in life. “No” may feel bad, but it is actually not worse than “Yes.”
A parent of a kindergartner sent me a speech on “The Importance of Mistakes” by John Cleese. Here is an excerpt:
“The very first nursery story that my mother ever read me was called Gordon the Guided Missile. When Gordon sets it off, it sends out signals to discover if it’s on course, and signals come back. “No, you are not on course. So change it, up a bit and slightly to the left.” Gordon changes course and then, rational little creature that he is, sends out another signal. The missile goes on and on making mistakes, and on and on correcting its behavior in light of feedback, until it blows up the nasty enemy thing.
As a result of making hundreds of little mistakes that could be corrected immediately, eventually the missile succeeded in avoiding the one mistake that would have really mattered—missing the target.
When Edison first produced the light bulb that worked, he explained that he had made more than 200 attempted light bulbs before one worked. “And how,” a journalist asked, “did you feel about all those mistakes?”
“They weren’t mistakes,” Edison replied (calmly, I’m told). “Every failure told me something that I was able to incorporate in the next attempt.”
Our culture has a built-in notion that self-esteem is a function of success, praise, and staying “positive.” Actually, that’s wrong. Self-esteem is a function of enthusiastic struggle, an important part of which is making mistakes. Pursuit of goals that are central to one’s needs, values, and interests and in keeping with the requirements of the environment, builds self-confidence and makes one successful.
