2. Learn from your mistakes.
The passenger liner Titanic was on its maiden voyage from England to the U.S. in 1912 when its officers ignored the warnings of icebergs in its path. Consequently, the right side of the boat scraped along an iceberg, resulting in over 1,500 lives being lost. The errors created by the crew of the ship didn’t directly cause the high number of fatalities. It was the lack of lifeboats that caused many people to perish. A journal article from the Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings suggests that had the Titanic had 32 lifeboats instead of 16, there would have been fewer casualties. It also suggests that because of this disaster, we learned that better regulations were needed for lifeboats and sailing.
Famous German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “By seeking and blundering we learn.” In other words, there’s always a lesson in our mistakes. Humans learn from our own mistakes and others’ mistakes, and it’s fine to make a mistake because it teaches us what works and what doesn’t. (Try not to have a mistake of Titanic-level proportions, though.)
“I think the advice I would give to myself as well as any young person coming forward is to really learn from your mistakes and actually grasp them and appreciate them. Every time something happens and it’s not exactly how you expected the outcome, rather than getting upset, don’t take that personally. Because every time something seemingly negative happens – a failure – as long as you learn from that, then now you have given yourself the ability to move forward even faster,” said Howell.