Hannah said “stupid!” each time.
Alexander said, “I’m so sorry!”
Mark said, “Oh, my God!”
What outrageous thing prompted these expressions of horror from these students?
They...made a mistake.
Yup. That’s it. Just a mistake! Each of these students, and millions more like them, have learned to dread the simple, human act of making an error.
And each of them has reinforced this dread of mistakes thousands of times in their young lives by calling themselves “stupid” or apologising for allowing such a horrible thing to happen. Most students have learned to think of mistakes as “bad” and think that learning is all about avoiding mistakes.
There are two cruel ironies here:
First, we actually NEED to make mistakes. Our brains develop by making mistakes, processing them, and learning from them.
And second, the way to achieve near-perfection is NOT avoiding mistakes. When we focus on avoiding mistakes, we play without confidence, and we actually make MORE mistakes.
The way to achieve near-perfection in any game is to OUTGROW YOUR MISTAKES. That is, to develop a mental picture of performing a task confidently and accurately, and then to repeat that performance until it becomes automatic.
Are you going to make mistakes? Yes. Appreciate them. Learn from them. Apply the lessons from them into your mental picture to make your performance even better...until, eventually, you're making fewer mistakes.
This pattern applies to any game you can think of: maths, writing, gymnastics, martial arts, musical performance.
Think about what it would look like to play your game brilliantly, then focus on playing it that way until the performance is automatic and ever closer to perfect.
