The Power of Mistakes

When I was a young child I learned about the power of making mistakes first hand. In my elementary school, grade 2 was a pivotal year for assessing reading skills. Any child that did not pass the set requirements would be held back another year. Unfortunately my home environment was not conducive to learning or reading. As a result I did not succeed in passing my assessment test which resulted in me failing grade 2.

I remember that day like it was yesterday; my father came into my room to tell me that I had failed which meant I would not be able to move forward with the rest of my classmates. I started to cry. I felt like I had let my father down and that I was the biggest failure of all. I felt so alone and somehow deficient.

I hated that feeling and I wanted to change it any way that I could. I desperately wanted to make my father proud by proving to him that I could be smart. So that summer I spent my days teaching myself how to read more proficiently; I opened up a library account and signed out as many books as I could. I read and read until I could read no more. The more I read the more I loved it and before I knew it I started to feel ‘smart’ again.

When I returned to grade 2 my teachers were astounded at how well I could read. They contacted my parents and offered to move me forward into grade 3 with the rest of my classmates. But my parents declined and said it would be too confusing for me and to just keep me where I was at.

I am so grateful that they did because from that day on I became an honor roll student in everything I studied. I went on to excel not only in grade school but also in my post secondary studies. I learned to become a practical learner and as such I needed to be okay with making mistakes. There was no room for perfectionism because the very act of making mistakes was where I found my success.

So you see by failing grade 2 I learned how to turn my failure into success by my making mistakes. I hope you can see that any time you feel like a failure that success is just around the corner. For success and failure go hand-in-hand and by making mistakes we are given the power to create success!