My Favorite Mistake
Here is a classic pattern: you try really hard to do something GOOD, then you fail, or you make something silly. And it is the failures that people love, or the thing that was just a silly thing. So try to set yourself up to failure, to not doing the thing that is right, but the thing that just sort of happens when you are not trying.
Henrik Karlsson • Henrik Karlsson on Substack
I want to make mistakes that are mine and celebrate them, and fail in ways that teach me that failure is not the opposite of life but its companion.
- I Owe Myself a Good Life (Substack)
I always see failure as an obstacle to living. But it’s a part of it. A requisite, a companion. No life without it. That’s the deal.
I used to value myself based on how fast I was learning and the breadth of the ground I was covering. This was a way to escape my own perfectionism — which caught up to me as soon as I started focusing on only one thing. I’m learning it’s a skill to sit with your mistakes, ask for help, and move slower and more deliberately.
Molly Mielke • deliberate
She was always tempering my expectations of myself, reminding me that just because something could technically be done better didn’t necessarily mean it had to be—and that in fact, doing it poorly might be allowing something else to be done better. You can waste a lot of energy trying to live up to a technical standard, or busy your soul with shame... See more