Make Mistakes

​Make those mistakes. Make them all the time. Make at least a few every day. Make mistakes part of your practice.

Why?

​My whole learning process is based on mistakes. Unfortunately, (and maybe fortunately?), this is how I learn. I have to try new things. I have to try silly things, even stupid things. I have to try all of the things.

For myself, I even have to try making the same mistakes over and over and over, and over, again. The first time I might learn 'A'. The second time I might learn 'B'. You get the point. On average, I probably make about 20 mistakes doing the same thing multiple times before I get it right.

Is this frustrating? Yes. Does it make my learning process longer? 100% yes! And that's also frustrating.

But eventually, I figure things out. It's what works for me. It's how I'm wired.

At the beginning of my 'I think I want to become a photographer' journey, I made a lot of mistakes. Sometimes I look back and think, wow, how much film did I waste trying to figure things out the hard way? (Yes film, I'm that old. You don't even want to know the number of photoshop versions I've been through.) I remember spending hours on projects that took others in my class much less time.

When I was working full time doing marketing photography, I made lots of mistakes. I had to re-do projects multiple times sometimes to get things right. Some of my mistakes were minor, some were basic things that I overlooked, and some were really embarrassing.

Had I let my mistakes stop me, I would have never hit my milestones.

Milestones like being able to travel to new places for jobs, getting work published, seeing my work in stores all over the country, being able to say hey, I have a full-time job doing something that I love every day! How many people get to say that?

It was all of my mistakes that got me there.

We live in a society where nearly everything seems to be perfect. A society where we think we can't talk about our mistakes, let alone make them on purpose!

I think if we changed our way of viewing things we might realize the beauty that mistakes can give us. We might give ourselves a little more grace when we are trying to make it to where we eventually want to be. We might even see the splendor in ourselves that could only come by making our mistakes.

All of our mistakes will become milestones if you let them!

So get out there and go make some big mistakes.