Mistakes & Successes

 So, another thread from my epic road trip that I am finally putting down.

I realized that most of us carry our (and others) mistakes far too long while overlooking the successes or the good around us. 

If I go out to camp 5 times a year, build a campfire every single time I'm camping, and have been doing it for 20 years. I've camped and built campfires 100 times. 

I will remember the one time when while building the campfire, a hot ember jumped out and burned me a little. I will not remember the other 99 times when nothing out of the ordinary happened. Maybe a few, but while I will have a specific memory of the 2008 Aug campfire that burned me, I will have only generic statements about the third campfire I ever built where we all roasted marshmallows and had fun like every other time since then, except the 2008 campfire.

It kinda makes sense - we have an idiom in Hindi. "Doodh ka jala, chhaach ko bhi phoonk phoonk k peeta hai". It means - Once bitten, twice shy. And specifically, someone who burnt their mouth while drinking hot milk starts blowing over cold milk to make sure he doesn't get burnt again.

Mistakes make us learn a lot more than our successes.

We are more concerned with "Don't do this or else.. " than "Hey! This was good, let's keep doing it"

How does that impact us, though - it creates doubt in our thinking. A chink in the armor that is our self-confidence. Even when we're right, it makes us ask - What if I was wrong? Is that the right way to approach it, though? Recently I read somewhere that recency bias is something we all suffer from. They talked about how we spend money, and a lot of times, the money we have already spent is a driver when we make a decision about the money we have not spent yet.

We've already spent a lot this month, so let's cut down our expenditure and not spend anymore. We start paying attention to what we've done rather than evaluating the expenditures that are yet to happen at their face value. Are those expenditures needed is a question that is exempt from how much we've already spent. Whether I've spent 5% of my monthly budget or 50% - has no impact on whether I need the new something or not.

It's the same with mistakes. If we've already made a mistake, it makes us wary about making others. We lose the rationale that the next thing we're working on has no relation to what has already happened. We are very careful not to make another mistake.

On the other hand, successes do not play the same role in the same capacity. I did one thing right today will not fill me with enough confidence that the next thing will also be done right because I was right the first time. Throwing numbers around randomly, the amount of confidence a mistake takes away - it may take 9 successes to gain back. It's not an equal relationship between mistakes & successes.