On his Mindset Mentor podcast (20 minutes each, four days a week), personal development coach Rob Dial tends to repeat the same principles, often packaging them slightly differently. One recurring theme he consistently stresses is the crucial importance of letting oneself mess things up. And it's not just because too many of us (myself included) are too hesitant to start something new because we fear we'll make fools of ourselves. It's important to get past that fallacy, to be sure, but there's another factor to consider as well. By making mistakes, "cocking it up" as James Bond's boss likes to warn him against, this focuses the brain on the problem with epinephrine supplied by the body to help with the necessary learning. Messing up, or "f##king up" as Dial so eloquently puts it, is an integral part of education. Which made me consider once again how "ass-backwards" my own school experiences were, with teachers awarding perfection with high grades and deducting grades for mistakes. One Russian professor in college even told my class that we could say anything in Russian to him, but only if it was mistake-free! And my experiences while working decades ago with Vietnamese refugees in the kitchen of a local Chinese restaurant supported Dial's conjecture: those who put their pride aside and tried to communicate as much as possible in English...no matter how clumsily...quickly learned it fluently while others fearful of not saying things "right" were much, much slower in their learning. Sometimes Rob Dial says stuff that is affirming, and, in a way, this podcast was as well. But it's more affirming with what I see in others rather than in what I myself am doing, sad to say...I have a lot of work ahead of me in this area...
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