Anne Truitt Zelenka

From Ellen Langer’s On Becoming an Artist:

Mistakes, like all evaluations, are context-dependent. In one context a mistake is an error, while in another it can be a surprise advantage. Others have spoken to the dual nature of mistakes but typically in reference to grander events. We all have heard that “there is opportunity in chaos.” What we may not know, however, is why that is so. I propose the answer is that mistakes may provoke mindfulness, and perhaps, as such, we ought to welcome and not just tolerate them.

What kind of mindfulness do mistakes provoke? This kind of mindfulness: a refusal to evaluate and categorize with dualities like right-wrong and bad-good; making subtle and numerous distinctions as we look back on our actions and their outcomes; meeting this moment as it is–completely new and unexpected; and understanding that what looks predictable in retrospect was not necessarily so while we were making decisions that now, to us or others, look like mistakes.

In a recent interview, Tara Hunt said the biggest mistake she made in her Internet career was “Not having enough faith in myself earlier on. Questioning my gut instinct. Not taking enough risks. It took me far too long to just go for it.”

But there’s another side to taking risks, that you might not notice if you ride a wild horse past that glib call to take more risks. It’s so easy to say “take some risks… you’ll regret it if you don’t.” But when you take real risks, you are bound to stumble sometimes, do something wrong, make a mistake. That feels terrible. And not only does it feel bad for this one time, it can make you shy away from taking more risks. The brain is good at generalizing, so good, in fact, that it overgeneralizes sometimes. When something goes wrong, it will set you up for future pattern matching that says “hey, this looks suspiciously like the last time… you know THAT TIME YOU MADE A MISTAKE!”

What to do then, given the twin needs to take risks and to care for our reactive psyches? If I were advising myself (and I am, because mistakes were made, at the macro and micro level) I would say this:

• Each time you make a decision you are choosing the best that you can see at the time
• In retrospect, it may seem like you should have known better even though you had no way to predict the outcome
• If you didn’t make what seems like a good decision, use what you’ve learned to improve your decision making for the future but don’t fret about this case
• Seek out environments where your default way of making decisions fits in and doesn’t clash with the overall approach
• Be authentically yourself in decision-making, because at least if everything goes to shit you won’t have betrayed yourself and your values. You can’t predict the future but you can live out what’s important to you.
• Don’t spend time with people that make you feel like shit about yourself, people who judge what you do as mistaken rather than understanding you work from a different place than they do. That’s as good an opening as any to say thanks to the people that are keeping me energized and optimistic when I’d rather crumple in a pathetic heap on the floor. So thank you to Leisa, amyloo, Ryan, Leo, Om, dad, Cote’, Judi, Henry, and of course, Rick. I really appreciate it, and hope I can do the same for you whenever you need it.