Focusing only on your mistakes makes you miss your accomplishments

Self-compassion leads to greater compassion toward others. — 123rf.com

I recently came across an interesting lesson attributed to Albert Einstein on how much weight we place on mistakes.

The story goes that the legendary physicist wrote the nine times table on a chalkboard, with all the arithmetic correct except for the last entry where he’d written “9x10=91”.

Of course, students in the classroom laughed at the elementary mistake. What kind of teacher makes such a basic error, let alone one who unravelled mysteries of the universe?

The tale proceeds with Einstein’s reply: “Despite the fact that I analysed nine problems correctly, no one congratulated me. But when I made one mistake, everyone started laughing. So here we see that, even when a person is largely successful, society will focus solely on the slightest mistake.”

At the Bodhinyana monastery in Perth, Australia, the Buddhist abbot Ajahn Brahm recounts a story about the time he built a wall. Upon completing his project, people applauded the craftsmanship after all his hard work and effort.

But Ajahn Brahm found it difficult to accept the praise because he noticed what no one else had: within the wall were two “bad bricks”, which to him spoiled the entire wall. How could anyone celebrate a job so poorly done?

One day, a builder visiting the monastery spotted the mistake. He told the monk, “Don’t worry, it happens all the time. We call it ‘a feature’ in the building trade, and people are happy to have a unique wall. You laid the other 998 bricks well enough, but I don’t suppose you can appreciate that if all you see is those two bricks.”

It’s comforting to know that even monastics, well trained in mindfulness and meditation, have the same human flaws and concerns as the rest of us. Whatever our level of professionalism, spirituality, or expertise, all of us make mistakes and none of us like it.

In self-compassion research, one of the factors of being compassionate towards ourselves is recognising the common humanity in trying our best and getting things wrong on occasion. Despite appearances on perfectly curated social media streams, none of us is impervious to errors in thinking, judgement or behaviour. What makes the difference is how we relate to our own humanness.

The root word of compassion comes from the Latin “pati” and the prefix “com.” Together, these translate literally as “to suffer with”. Self-compassion, therefore, means appreciating that we don’t always get it right, that life is often challenging and, despite all we face, we do our best to show up and cope as best we can.

Often, self-compassion is greatly misunderstood to mean “giving ourselves a free pass”, and seen as an “either/or” concept. Either we go easy on ourselves and never progress or we are tough on ourselves if we want to achieve and thrive.

But self-compassion is really a “this/and” skill that we can cultivate to get the best out of who we are without beating ourselves up in the process.

We can know the importance of working hard to get that promotion and the importance of rest and leisure that help us along the way. We can make mistakes and appreciate the value of learning what those mistakes have to teach us. We can try our best and know that we’ll sometimes fall short just like everybody else.

When we engage in what the Franciscan priest Fr Richard Rohr calls “dualistic thinking”, we limit ourselves and each other to the point that we become stagnant for fear of getting it wrong. Not only does life become lived through the lens of anxiety and fear, but we also stop learning from and enjoying life.

Even if we learn, it becomes difficult to apply our knowledge in meaningful ways when everything boils down to evaluation and comparison. Much of the time, family and romantic relationships break down, in part, due to the tendency to find fault, and if that’s how we look at ourselves it’s little wonder we project that same “fault-finding” onto others.

As Ajahn Brahm noticed, while others were able to see the beauty of his wall, he missed out on appreciating the fruits of his labour because all he could see were the small mistakes that, in his mind, characterised the entire structure.

Isn’t that true of ourselves and family members? If the child scores 95% in an exam, they might be asked, “Why not 100%?” If we perform well at work and one person criticises us, we’re likely to define ourselves by that one person’s comments.

Self-compassion leads to greater compassion toward others. It’s not about giving anyone a free pass but rather saying (to ourselves and others), “Good effort, well done! If you’ve made a mistake, that’s OK – it shows you were trying and that’s the most important thing.”

Imagine what would happen if we could learn to let go of the need to have perfection in ourselves or others. Imagine how relationships could be transformed when built on love and support rather than comparison and judgement.

---

Sunny Side Up columnist Sandy Clarke has long held an interest in emotions, mental health, mindfulness and meditation. He believes the more we understand ourselves and each other, the better societies we can create. If you have any questions or comments, email [e-mail]. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.