I Thought My Mistakes Were Ruining My Life
But the life I wanted required me to make them.
I thought mistakes were ruining my life.
But looking back...
the life I wanted required me to make them.
The only way I could have stopped making mistakes...
was to stop doing anything that could change me.
Early on in school I’m naturally getting A’s and B’s. School made mistakes feel very simple. There was a right answer, a wrong answer, and enough wrong answers lowered your grade.
And so I never wanted to make mistakes. I remember once finishing a math test when I was 14…
I did quite good on the test, but I made a mistake on one of the questions.
I couldn’t get my mind off of it. How did it happen? It shouldn’t have been a mistake.
I sit down with my math teacher and we spend a long time on it.
Teacher, I know the right answer now!
I never should’ve made that mistake.
My teacher says,
It’s okay Alex, you still did well.
But I didn’t want him to think I did badly.
So now that I showed him I could figure out the right answer, now he thinks I’m smart…
Alex, you’ve figured it out, you will do better next test.
Now, I’m not as much of a failure.
…
So somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing mistakes as information. I started seeing them as evidence of how well I was doing.
It’s a lovely summer day and my dad asks me for help…
Alex, come and help me grill this meat!
Yes dad!
I’m sitting and watching the grill.
But occasionally I’m looking away at the nature or something, I’m easily distracted.
All of the sudden, a bit of the fat on the meat dripped down into the flames…
a cloud of fire burst from the food…
okay, I know what I’m supposed to do…
turn off the gas…
get the fire blanket…
and close the grill.
…
But I freeze…
my dad rushes over, and he quickly handles everything himself.
but I realized that…
Some mistakes actually can have consequences.
so now, I start noticing mistakes everywhere…
Tiny details I could’ve done differently.
Things I constantly forgot.
And decisions I could’ve made differently.
Eventually, that way of thinking follows me into bigger decisions.
Should I stay in school?
Should I drop out?
Should I keep doing YouTube?
What if I choose wrong?
Now a mistake doesn’t just mean losing points on a test.
It feels like I could ruin my future.
…
I’m in high school and trying to build up my YouTube gaming channel.
And I’m doing a test that I thought would be easy…
But now, I can barely think of any answers…
Wait, I knew this as a kid…
I’ve never felt this lost in school ever…
Why am I so dumb?
I make so many mistakes and I end up walking up and handing the paper early…
Because I feel like a complete failure compared to who I was in primary school…
….
Then, as I decide to focus all in on my business I decide to drop out…
And dropping out of school becomes terrifying because there is no answer sheet anymore.
Nobody can tell me whether it’s the right decision.
…
My sister calls me and is crying. She tells me to come up.
I’ve heard her cry a lot but something about her tone this time was very serious…
I hear intense footsteps upstairs…
I rush to my family…
I see that my father has cut himself and that there’s blood everywhere.
I assertively ask my family if anybody has called emergencies in a calm and clear tone of voice…
my sister can barely talk, I understand.
I take her phone and I call them.
I’ve never talked more clearly in my life…
But when they asked all the questions I accidentally missed one…
Sorry what did you say?
After correcting myself, I help clean up the floor and we drive to the hospital
…
Everything ended up working out…
But I never thought I would ever act like I’m in full control of my body, in an emergency like this.
For years, freezing at that grill became evidence that I couldn’t trust myself when something went wrong.
I still made a mistake. I misheard one of the questions. But this time, I didn’t treat the mistake like proof that I couldn’t handle the situation. I corrected it and kept going.
I notice the same thing when I play piano in public.
I used to make one mistake...
and immediately think about the mistake.
Sometimes that made me mess up the next few notes too.
Now I can hit the wrong key...
hear it...
and keep playing.
The mistake still happened.
I just stopped turning one wrong note into the rest of the song.
…
One wrong note doesn’t ruin a song unless I stop playing because of it.
Maybe life works the same way.
…
Then I look at the decisions that changed my life most.
Starting YouTube.
Leaving school.
Relationships.
Businesses.
None of them came with an answer sheet.
I made bad calls.
Changed direction.
Failed.
Corrected.
And somehow, I kept moving.
And slowly I realize:
the choices that created the most growth in my life...
were also the choices where mistakes were unavoidable.
I had spent years trying to build a life where I made fewer mistakes.
But to eliminate mistakes completely...
I would have had to eliminate experimentation.
Risk.
Learning.
Change.
I would have had to stop moving.
That doesn’t mean mistakes don’t matter.
Some mistakes hurt people.
Some cost money.
Some have real consequences.
So now, when I make one, I try to do something different.
Take responsibility.
Fix what I can.
Understand why it happened.
Learn from it.
But I try not to turn:
I made a mistake
into:
I am a mistake.
I used to think a good life was one where I made fewer mistakes.
Now I think it’s one where I make them...
take responsibility...
learn what they can teach me...
and keep moving.
Because the only way I could have stopped making mistakes...
was to stop doing anything that could change me.