The Art of Falling Forward: How to Improve Your Life by Making More Mistakes

The education system in the modern Western world has a tendency to ingrain people with the idea that making mistakes is a bad thing. When we make a mistake we end up with a bad grade or a bad report. When we get everything right, we are praised. Growing up, I was one of the bright kids who always had the right answer. I was terrified of being wrong or making a mistake. That’s why it took me such a long time to realize that not only is making mistakes a good thing, it’s actually a necessary part of all learning and self-improvement. It’s impossible to ever reach your full potential if you’re afraid of making a few mistakes.

Think about how your physical body grows and builds muscles. When you go to the gym and lift weights, is your body actually growing while you’re in the gym? No. The work in the gym is tearing the muscle down – when you’re working out, you are actually going backwards. But then the miracle happens – your body learns. Your body knows that your muscle cells are suddenly having to work harder, so during the recovery period those muscles will grow back stronger in order to prepare you for whatever it is in your environment that is putting so much strain on you. (Of course your body doesn’t know it’s a bench press and some dumbbells.)

The same principle applies to learning. You have to go backwards before you can make any worthwhile gains. When you make a mistake, you learn to differentiate what works in different situations. You make new distinctions. A mistake is never a failure as long as you learn from it. Read the autobiographies of successful people from every walk of life and you will see this lesson repeated over and over again.

So let’s apply this to meeting women. A lot of guys use a fear of rejection as an excuse to avoid approaching a woman they are attracted to. Some guys really believe that they “just suck” when it comes to women and that’s the way it will always be. But this really isn’t the case. You can improve the results you get in your love life the same way you can improve your skills on the tennis court or learn algebra. But you don’t learn anything from a textbook – you learn by doing the exercises. That means going out into a social situation and meeting people. There is always a possibility of rejection, but this is absolutely not an excuse not to meet someone. Social rejection is generally far less painful than we imagine it to be. What may come as a shock to many is that most people are actually very friendly. The ones who don’t want to talk to you will generally give you a polite brush-off. I have never, not once, been told to “f--- off” or anything of the kind by a stranger I’ve approached.

So rejection is really not that scary. The key thing is that when it happens, you must learn something from it. The problem is never you, it’s your approach. So consider these things:

-what you said

-your body language – were you visibly nervous?

-long pauses and awkward silence

-humour in the conversation

-showing confidence

These are just a few of the things that might have caused the interaction to fizzle. So, you choose what you think is the biggest problem, and you keep that in focus when you meet the next woman. Do that until you have that issue sorted. Then go onto the next biggest problem. If you do this consistently, I promise your love life is about to improve in a big way.

This principle is applicable to any skill that requires time to develop. Another example from my life would be learning karate. The martial arts are an area of life where you have to be prepared to fail, over and over again, before you get the results you are looking for. In order to earn your belts, your body is pushed to the point of failure. If you walk into a dojo and watch a black belt train, and then give up because you can’t imitate him or her straight away, then you will never achieve anything great. Skill is developed by doing something wrong repeatedly and refining the technique over time, eliminating whatever is wrong, continually making new distinctions. In the martial arts, there is even a correct way to fall to minimize your injuries. In life, there is also a right way to fall. You can fall backwards or forwards. Those who fall backwards get disheartened and give up. Those who fall forwards make mistakes, learn from them, and improve.