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A perfect life. A simple life. A life without mistakes?

If you’re like most people, you do your best to avoid mistakes. It is natural. Mistakes have consequences we dislike and we all  like to be comfortable.

What is the price we pay for that?

In life, there’s expensive mistakes and there’s cheap mistakes. According to Seth Godin’s recent article “A hierarchy of failure worth following” sometimes we should aim to make more mistakes.

Within a business context, he suggest that we should seek to fail more often when we are creating proposals than when we are developing prototypes than when we are presenting to senior executives than when we are interacting with customers than when we are delivering on past promises. Makes sense to me. A similar hierarchy can be applied to our personal lives (Want to try? Leave a comment here)

The importance of Seth’s article is that it opens our eyes to a simple reality: We mostly learn from our mistakes. If we are always doing our best to to avoid making mistakes, we slow the rate of learning. And a slower rate of learning means a slower rate of growth.

Yes, growth. That ultimate holy grail of modern life. Both the personal and the business type. How much would you be willing to pay to accelerate yours?

Here’s a small price to pay: spend 5 minutes NOW to reflect and get your priorities right. Choose a hierarchy (almost ANY hierarchy is better than NO hierarchy) of domains where you are more willing to fail than others; then act accordingly.

You’ll have a better life for it. I guarantee it.

Unless I am making a mistake in saying that

Tagged as: alchemy of growth, art of making mistakes, business growth, fail, failing, growth, Mistakes, perfect life, Personal, Personal Development, personal growth, Seth Godin

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