Creative People Make Things: They Make Mistakes

Creative people make mistakes. It’s how they learn what needs improvement. Botched experiments, sour notes, and crooked lines are par for the creative course, and more often than you might imagine, the mistakes are more interesting than the intended outcomes.

But for some reason, the very thought of screwing up can fill our hearts with terror, as if the world would end should we flub our lines, dance out of step, or drop the ball.

I think it’s one part evolution, one part education, and one part confusion.

It’s Not Survival of the Flawless

Fear helps us survive, which is why it’s a trait that’s been passed down by those who survived before us. If we were truly fearless, we might find it compelling to snack on a peanut-butter and cyanide sandwich, tickle a grizzly bear, or start up a game of Red Rover on the freeway.

The problem with fear, however, is that our brains can’t always distinguish a real threat from an imagined one. The two often feel the same. It’s up to us to talk to our brains and teach them the difference.

We have to take a deep breath and quietly explain that creative mistakes aren’t life threatening, they’re life enhancing. They’re the path to personal growth and finished work. We can’t experience either of those things without a willingness to make mistakes.

No One’s Grading Us and It Wouldn’t Matter if They Did

But the fear of making mistakes isn’t only part of our nature; it’s also how many of us were nurtured, especially in many of our classrooms.

Some of our schools taught us to fear mistakes, because they used them to label, categorize, and divide us into the good and the bad, the smart and the dumb, the strong and the weak.

Instead of challenging us, they graded us. The grades made it easy to sort us out, but they did little to lift us up. An F told us we failed, but it didn’t tell us how to improve or that we even could. An A made us proud, but it also made us complacent by fooling us into believing we could want nothing more.

No one told us we could reach higher than our teachers’ expectations. No one told us that the way to do so was to make more mistakes, continually pushing just beyond our comfort zone. To hell with the grades. We want progress.

We’re Not Performing Surgery

Also, sometimes we confuse creative work with other forms of work. We behave as though we’re performing something as precise as heart surgery. We approach our projects as if we’re members of the bomb squad. One false move, we fear, and we’ve got ourselves a flatliner and a room full of body parts.

But creative work needn’t be so nerve wracking. Part of the joy of creativity should be the freedom it provides to try new things without the fear of harming ourselves or anyone else should we stumble. It’s meant to be playful, not stressful.

Besides, the best surgeons and bomb dismantlers don’t approach their work with a paralyzing fear of making mistakes. They operate under an alert kind of calmness that allows them to improvise when the situation calls for it.

Make a Mess and Make Something

And for you, a person who wants to be creative and make things, the situation calls for a willingness to make mistakes.

So make them, lots of them. Laugh at them, learn from them, and make something out of them.