“When you hit the wrong note, it’s the next note that makes it good or bad.”
Miles Davis
I love this quote from jazz legend Miles Davis. It’s such a great concept. A bad note in music is not defined in isolation. It’s defined by it’s context – by what happens before and afterwards.
The same is true for life in general. We will all make mistakes. You can’t avoid it. Mistakes are part of life, part of progress, part of growth and becoming better. Mistakes are inevitable.
It’s what happens next that counts.
Without mistakes we wouldn’t have chocolate chip cookies. 😮 Ruth Graves Wakefield, was baking cookies for her guests at the Toll House Inn. To make the cookies chocolate, Wakefield decided to chop up a block of semi-sweet chocolate thinking that the chunks of chocolate would melt and spread through out the cookies evenly during baking. Instead of spreading evenly as she had hoped, out came what are now known as chocolate chip cookies.
Without mistakes we wouldn’t have the pacemaker. John Hopps was conducting research on hypothermia and was trying to use radio frequency heating to restore body temperature. During his experiment he realized if a heart stopped beating due to cooling, it could be started again by artificial stimulation. This realization led to the pacemaker.
Don’t fear mistakes embrace them. Making mistakes is the only way to progress. It’s the only way to get better.
I constantly tell the rugby players that I coach, try things on the training field, it is here for us to be able to make mistakes and see what happens.
Don’t fear mistakes, embrace them and make your next note the thing that defines you, not the mistake.