All your life you’ve been told there’s a right way to do things; there’s a “right path” to follow.
You’ve been told success doesn’t happen by accident, and you were probably lectured on the “safest” way to achieve it. Also, you probably didn’t listen.
You’re a creative. While you understand the virtue of “listening,” you’re also passionate about expression -- and sometimes your instinct is to do things differently, to ensure your voice is heard.
And a lot of times, this will lead to some screwups. Hey, sometimes that’s just how sh*t goes.
That said, creative people understand that mistakes are not meant to be roadblocks and that -- more often than not -- innovation arises on the heels of error.
Life is about experience, and by being afraid to f*ck up from time to time, you'll ultimately limit the diversity of the experiences you'll have.
And while sometimes creativity leads to some failed attempts, as Wayne Gretzky once said, "You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take”; so expect us to keep on firing.
Creative people make mistakes -- and we’re proud of them.
Here’s why.
We don’t follow the conventional paths
Creative people tend to be more mistake-prone than others because we usually don’t follow the same path as the masses.
When all of our peers were preparing for things like law school or a desk job, we were cultivating our visions.
And sometimes our visions need some adjustment -- but at the same time -- the only way to find out is by actually taking the risk to pursue them.
When you choose to be a leader, and not a follower, you’re bound to come across some problems.
What separates creative people from the rest, however, is that when we encounter these roadblocks -- we’ll find ways to overcome them.
We don’t like rules
Creative people hate rules. Rules are meant to keep operations running a certain way and, as a rule of thumb, creative people strive to do things according to their own vision.
And visionaries are so special -- and rare -- because they’re able to do things in ways that have never been done before. That’s what innovation is.
All this being said, by trying to think outside of the box, it’s easy to get carried away, and that ultimately leads to mistakes.
But, when it comes to passion, the successes will usually overshadow the failures -- especially when we achieve them on our own terms.
Creativity is a process
Creativity involves experimentation. It involves seeing what works and, at the same time, seeing what doesn’t work, too.
Mistakes are part of the process. You can’t go from rough drafts to final copies without revision in the middle.
Creative people understand that mistakes aren’t meant to remind us that we can’t do something -- they only indicate places for potential improvement.
When all is said and done, most success can be traced back to a mistake and, most importantly, how we responded to that mistake.
Creativity is eccentric
By doing things “by the book,” it’s easy to avoid certain mistakes. Rarely though will creative people do anything “by the book.” Creativity requires eccentricity and that type of behavior to be “feast or famine,” in and of itself.
An important quality about most creative people is our persistence. So, at times when our eccentric tendencies may not be well received by the masses and appear like a mistake, we’ll usually find the determination and faith in ourselves to stick with our vision -- and see it through for the long run.
Creative people are risk-takers
Creative people love taking risks. It’s almost as if we need to have our backs against the wall before we can actually stumble across some work that we’re proud of.
Part of what makes success so fulfilling is the fact that failure was, in fact, a possibility.
In many instances, that’s what drives creative people; it’s a mentality, one that follows the whole “starving artist” mantra.
Creative people trust their instincts, even if there’s a price to pay for failure. Life is too boring, otherwise.
It’s how we learn
For most creative people, our kryptonite is the classroom.
I don’t know; there’s just something about having to sit stationary in a small room for hours on end -- following a lesson plan -- that doesn’t sit well with us.
Probably because most creative people don’t care to learn much from a desk, or a lecture hall or any designated “learning place.”
We’d rather learn by experience -- and we also understand that experience is simply the name we give our mistakes, as Oscar Wilde once brilliantly put it.
