Mistakes Make Us Interesting

It’s interesting that we live in a world where people are so afraid of making mistakes and failure.  But aren’t the most interesting stories filled with the mistakes that the main character makes along their journey?

A couple of days ago I was watching a show on Netflix about this guy who helps people with their personal finances.  One young lady found herself in a condo she just bought that she was quickly learning was too expensive for her income.  She was in her twenties and at one point was crying because she said she felt like a failure.  One of her concerns was what her friends would say if she gave up the condo.  It reminded me of running into friends from college after graduation when I had just quit working as an engineer.  You do all this work to get to this particular situation that is thought of as being successful and then you walk away from it?  “What will people say?!”  This is a natural concern.  So we hesitate to act in a situation that has clearly gone awry.

These are situations that I would call sunk cost fallacy situations.  We’ve invested heavily in a particular situation and we believe we should keep going even though it’s very clear that letting go would be more beneficial.  It’s part of the challenge of being social creatures I would argue.  We have to be concerned about what people think about us to a certain extent, in order to have connections.  The balance is to not be so concerned that we’re making irrational decisions based on what we think other people are thinking of us.

I think a large part of maturing in life is the ability to face the unknown.  Mistake making is inherent to an environment that we haven’t encountered before and should be expected in such situations (dealing with the unknown).  And as I said, in interesting stories the main character makes errors.  Who among us wants to be the main character in a boring movie?