Wrong Turn, Right Way - Learning from our mistakes

I drove myself to physical therapy the other day without using my GPS. It wasn't a big undertaking - the PT office is on the same road as the grocery store that immediately made Crofton feel a bit like home (Wegmans), and behind the Dick’s Sporting Goods where we stop frequently for baseball gear.

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However, the office is in a cluster of new buildings that all look alike and have a unique traffic pattern running through them. Up to this drive, I had let the GPS guide me through the maze of roads and medians, right to the front door.

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This time, without my GPS, I found myself stuck behind a Petco with plenty of delivery trucks, but no cut-through to the PT.

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My first thought was to open up Maps, but I decided to just turn around and figure it out on my own. I made my way back and got to PT with a couple minutes to spare and I’m pretty confident that the next time I go, I’ll get it right on the first try.

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This experience made me reflect on how much less I (we?) learn when we just follow a step-by-step plan. When I used my GPS, I had the turn-by-turn and I didn't make mistakes. But I also didn’t learn. I stayed dependent on the GPS.

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When I took the wrong turns and had to navigate back to the route on my own, I became much more attuned to the path and actually learned from the drive.

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So many of the things we do these days come with tech support that prevents us from needing to exercise our brains - We don’t make wrong turns or call wrong numbers. We don’t accidentally tape over our favorite shows or double expose our film.

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Little, low-stakes mistakes matter. They train our brains to learn and grow from experience. And they teach us how to recover and build resilience.

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We need that, because the bigger, most important things in life still don’t have step-by-step instructions and answers you can Google. We have to figure it out on our own and learn from the missteps we make along the way.

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Things like:

• Navigating difficult staffing decisions where at least one person is going to be really unhappy with the outcome.
• Having a difficult conversation with the client who is repeatedly overstepping your agreement and it’s time to reset some boundaries.
• Figuring out who to learn from and listen to (and who to tune out) as you can pave your own way.

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No matter how committed we are to avoiding mistakes, especially the ones that negatively impact others, we inevitably will make them.

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Learning from little mistakes won’t prevent us from making the bigger mistakes.

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It will prepare us to recover and learn from them faster.

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Start small where you can. Turn off the GPS on a regular route and see what you learn along the way.

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Much love,

Laura

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