Going Beyond — step 6; Magical Mistakes
The final step from my Pyramid of Beyond seems somewhat counter-intuitive. At first glance the title of this story is an oxymoron — how can a mistake, something we are taught from childhood to be negative, be magical?
The reality is very different. As I mentioned in my TEDx talk, I’m not expecting people to deliberately make mistakes, that’s simply a pattern of consistent failure that will inevitably lead to the exact opposite function of the Pyramid, which is to maximise the opportunities that come your way.
The key point here is that from a very young age we are taught that ‘mistakes’ are bad, wrong or incorrect. All three of my children have cried when the picture they are drawing has ‘gone wrong’, or when their colouring has gone over the lines. Why? Because they have been taught a set of rules which deem this to be wrong. As a toddler, you scribble, tear and mess up paintings and drawings with an unbridled joy. At school, this is frowned upon. Over time this is educated out of us. I find this saddening — bring back the joy!
At Art College I was taught portraiture by one of the UK’s greatest painters, Peter Edwards. At his first lecture he showed us an extraordinary painting of one of my heroes, Bobby Charlton. Not only was I dumbfounded by the sheer beauty of the painting, I was also amazed by what I considered (at the age of 17) to be ‘mistakes’. In the painting you can clearly see ghost-like lines of where Peter was drawing the subject, which were left in place.
This blew my mind. I asked him about it and he simply said it was part of the way he painted, part of the process and part of the art he was creating. This changed my perspective on how I created art. Ever since then I draw using an almost continuous line, making plenty of ‘mistakes’ but ultimately (I hope) creating something which works.
The key point I want to make here is not that we should seek out mistakes, but that we should not be afraid of them. Sometimes there is beauty in these mistakes and this is what we should embrace.
Think of the wonderful mistakes that have been made throughout history — from Alexander Fleming accidentally discovering penicillin by leaving his dirty petri dishes out over a weekend and ultimately saving millions of lives, right through to the lovely story of Richard James trying to stabilise sensitive instruments on ships in the 1940s and accidentally designing the Slinky, which went on to sell over 300 million copies.
So, when you get to the pinnacle of your pyramid, when you are amplifying action to maximise those opportunities, do not be afraid of mistakes. Rather, embrace them. You never know what beauty lies within them and how they can become a positive aspect in your journey to achieve your goals.
