One of the greatest obstacles to progress is the fear of making mistakes. There are too many people that are paralysed by indecision, because they are afraid that taking any action could be a mistake. You want to succeed in your world. And making mistakes will never take you closer towards achieving your goals. Therefore, mistakes must be avoided at all costs. However, this line of thought is harmful in the long run. You want to make peace with the idea that you will make mistakes. The good news is that most of the mistakes you will make can be corrected over time.
Unless you work in surgery or fly airplanes, you should not be too worried about making mistakes. Those are two industries where you are required to make life-and-death decisions within seconds. There are no such stakes in your personal life. Your life is not an emergency room, and you will not die if it turns out you have made a wrong decision. There are very few mistakes that you will not be able to correct over time. What destroys people is not the initial mistake they made, but allowing the mistake to lead to even more mistakes.
Taking any action is always better than holding back because of the fear of making a mistake. This is because you would never know what is going to work until you take action. If things do not work, you learn from it and try again with the lessons you’ve acquired through experience. Every successful person or institution has had to evolve over time. You learn from your day-to-day activities and improve your ability to make better decisions. You must not cower away in fear of making mistakes. It is not healthy and it will stop you from making meaningful progress. The productive thing to do is to evaluate all the options in front of you, and make a decision. If it turns out to be a mistake, you can reverse it over time.
