By Leo Babauta

Lately I’ve been studying the game of chess, and while I’m still very much a beginner and not good at the game, it’s been teaching me a lot about the learning process. One of the best lessons is that my mistakes fuel the engine of my growth as a player.

This applies, of course, to everything we’re doing in life. When we’re in a learning or growth process, we’re inevitably going to mess up. If we aren’t making some mistakes, we’re probably not growing, because we’re doing something we’re already good at!

Let’s take a few examples:

• Learning a language: if you’re getting every sentence correct, you’re only speaking the sentences you already know. It’s when you start to forget words or phrases that you’re pushing into territory you don’t know. And those forgotten or mangled words or phrases will show you what you’ve forgotten, so you can study and practice and eventually incorporate it into your known territory.

• Forming a new habit: If you do the habit perfectly, it was probably a bit too easy for you (and that’s not a bad way to start). It’s when you struggle a bit with the habit that you’re going into the discomfort zone and really growing, and the struggles will illuminate the areas you need to grow and what you need to learn.

• Taking on a meaningful project: Some projects are easy, and you can knock them out in a few days. But longer-term projects that have some challenge to them will show us where our inner resistance is, and teach us something about ourselves. Not “how am I crappy” but rather, where do I get caught up in worrying about my self-image, or what can I learn about my motivation?

These examples aren’t exhaustive — this idea applies to learning how to be a rock climber (or any other sport), getting better at dealing with conflict (or any relationship aspect), public speaking, growing your business, studying something in school, and much more.

What are you trying to grow in as a person right now? What are you trying to learn?

Let’s look at how to use these mistakes to fuel your growth.

A Positive View of Mistakes

The first thing we need to do is examine our view of our own mistakes. I notice for myself that I find mistakes in chess embarrassing, and if I look in other areas, I notice that embarrassment too. I want to hide the mistakes from others because I see them as embarrassing.

As long as we hold this view, it will be difficult to use them to improve, because we think we shouldn’t be making them. If that’s true, we probably don’t really want to look at them closely, it can be too painful.

I encourage you to take the view that a mistake teaches you something. It illuminates the path for you.

Mistakes are also also an integral part of learning — you can’t learn without them. No one learns without mistakes, not even experts.

Finally, mistakes can even be fun! If we take the attitude of “I’m going to play around with this, and see if this works, and try this out, and see how this goes” … then it becomes like an experiment or playground. That’s so fun!

A Method for Using Your Mistakes to Grow

OK, with this view of mistakes, let’s look at how we can use them to grow.

Here’s what you might try:

1. Give it your best attempt. Whether you’re trying something challenging in a language or sport, or trying your best at a project or habit change … give it your best shot. That means don’t do it mindlessly, but instead give it your whole effort with full attention. You can grow if you try to take the easy way, but you’ll grow exponentially more if you put a good effort into it.

2. Make a note of your mistakes. In chess, I’ve been keeping a log of mistakes I make in games. This gives me something to reflect on and to grow. Most people want to brush past their mistakes (again, because of embarrassment), but it really helps to take a closer look at them.

3. Reflect on the mistakes. If you have a coach or teacher, reflect on the mistakes with them, because it can help a lot. But if not, that’s OK — take some time a couple times a week (or more if you have time) to reflect on what you can learn from these mistakes. What do they illuminate? What’s a new thing you can try? If you forgot something, study those things you forgot.

4. Try again, with intention. Give it another good effort, but with the intention to practice the thing you studied or the new way you want to try. Don’t expect perfection but just try to be intentional. Over time, this step will lead to expansion.

5. Repeat! You’ll stumble a lot, but that’s OK. Keep going! If you use this process regularly, you will grow.

How can you incorporate this into your learning or growth process? If you’d like help from me, hire me as a coach.