[On Success] Best Mistakes[关于成功] 最佳过错

A few weeks ago, I attended a workshop entitled “Your Best Mistakes.”  At this workshop, we were told to get into pairs and describe our three “best mistakes” to our partner.  One person would tell her “best mistake,” while the other person would listen carefully and take notes.  At first, I found this process rather awkward.  First of all, it was difficult to even think of “best mistakes.”  Besides the fact that humans naturally tend to “forget” mistakes we make in order to avoid the pain of thinking about them, “best mistakes” by definition also have to be mistakes that we recognize and can learn from.  (We tend to blame a lot of our mistakes on other people, and hence fail to recognize them as real mistakes).  After thinking of my three mistakes, it was also more difficult than I thought to describe them to my partner.  After all, describing your mistakes to someone else is like revealing your most vulnerable attributes to others — airing your dirty laundry so to speak.  This can be even more difficult when you are sharing your mistakes with someone you respect and you want to respect you (this workshop is often done with CEOs who, as you can imagine, find it very difficult to share their mistakes with one another).  Luckily, after opening up, I began to enjoy pouring out my mistakes to my partner — it was almost like therapy.  The valuable component, however, was the feedback that we received from our partners in terms of pattern recognition.  After looking at my three mistakes, I realized that the common theme running through all of them was a situation in which I put in 90% of effort that was “good enough,” but not great, because I had spread myself too thin.  The result was that I did not achieve the goals I had intended to reach.  Looking back on that workshop, I realize that what had started out as a very awkward “air your dirty laundry” exercise, turned into a valuable life lesson.  As our workshop leader emphasized, successful leaders are agile learners — my advice to all of you then — (and my advice to my future self) — is to fully embrace all the mistakes that you make in your life, and use each and every one of them to their fullest learning potential.几个星期前，我参加了一个名为“你的最佳过错”的研讨会。在本次研讨会中，我们被要求两两配对并向队友描述自己的3个“最佳过错”，并且当一方讲述她的“最佳过错”时，另一方要仔细聆听并且做好笔记。一开始，我觉得这个过程相当尴尬。首先，要想到“最佳过错”就不是一件容易的事。除了人们会自然而然地倾向于“忘掉”自己犯下的过错，以此来避免因再次想起它们而带来痛苦这一事实不说，从定义上讲，“最佳过错”必须是我们能够意识到同时又具有借鉴意义的过错（我们常倾向于在自己犯错时去责怪他人，从而不能真正意识到自己所犯的这些过错）。但在我想到了自己的3个最佳过错后，如何将其描述给我的队友却显得比我想象的要更加困难。毕竟，向他人讲述自己的过错就好比向别人展露自己最脆弱的一面 — “自揭其短”。特别是当你要和你自己尊重的以及希望尊重你的那些人分享自己的过错时就显得更加困难了（这类研讨会的参与者常是企业老总，可以想像，这些人会觉得和其他人分享他们的过错是一件非常困难的事）。幸运的是，在打开话夹后，我开始尽情向我的队友倾吐我的过错，这几乎就像是一种治疗。然而，其中最具价值的部分在于我们从队友处得到的在模式识别方面的反馈意见。在审视了我的3个过错后，我意识到贯穿这些过错的共同之处在于我只付诸了90%的努力，这只是“足够好”， 但不是最好，因为我并没有倾尽全力。其结果是，我并没有实现我原本打算达到的目标。回顾那次研讨会，我发现一开始一项非常尴尬的“自揭其短”的活动最后竟演变成了一次宝贵的人生课堂。就像我们的研讨会负责人所强调的那样，成功的领导者通常也是机敏的学习者。我对你们所有人的忠告（同时也是对我自己的忠告）即是要全然接受自己生活中所犯过的所有过错，并从每一个过错中充分发掘其学习潜能。