Why does a single thought of making a mistake send shivers down our spines?

Many people are afraid of making mistakes since society paints it as a horrible thing to do. In reality, mistakes play an important role in developing who we are as a person. Mistakes help you discover what you can develop, such as sports, cooking, arts, etc. But most importantly it helps us discover our weaknesses and strengths which leads us to focus more on our weaknesses.

Mistakes can let you get used to failure but the more you fail the more you learn to correct yourself without feeling ashamed for what you did wrong. After doing something incorrectly, people get embarrassed and don’t want to admit that they’re wrong. It’s also important to remember that they are a part of growth and progress. Holding onto failure is a way to learn new opportunities that will build your confidence and flexibility to fix and get stronger from every mistake.

Jaden Larsen said on the matter, “I get embarrassed when it’s a small mistake like putting the milk in the cupboard and the cereal in the fridge. But on another occasion, there was a mistake. I wasn’t embarrassed about forgetting to do my homework or missing a question on homework or work.”

Learning from your flaws allows you to reflect on what went wrong and how to prevent that in future experiences. For example, when you play a sport or anything that involves teamwork and you make an error you may feel ashamed or even embarrassed but flaws alone can help what you should work on and how to avoid it in the future. But mistakes aren’t just in sports they could be academic, you may get some questions wrong on a test for not studying enough or not going over that subject well enough, and soon after you get your feedback

Freshman Zoe Castilleja said, “I learned not to be a procrastinator with my work because it came back to bite me in the butt later. Also serving with volleyball I realized the way I was serving wasn’t going over the net so I changed my serving style and it went over.”

Fear will always follow everything and a way to overcome this overwhelming feeling of mistakes is to focus on how far you’ve come, whether over a few days, months, or years. The more you keep looking up, the more you’re guaranteed to be successful.