You’re Not Stupid — How To Accept Mistakes
Have you ever felt judged for doing something wrong, for not understanding something, or being unable to wrap your head around an item’s functionality? Have you ever — even subconsciously — judged someone for this? Of course you have. And so have I.
Understanding why no one’s perfect and thus empathizing with ourselves and others can help us be better persons. Here’s all that I’ve learned on this topic.
How should’ve I known?
One of the first moments that made me think about this issue, was last year when I was starting in the hospitality field, working in different restaurants and bars. It was my second week at the new workplace and someone ordered a filter coffee. Nothing special, just a cup of everyone’s favorite caffeinated beverage — except that until then, no one had yet ordered it from me.
The place was packed, so I didn’t think embarking on a journey through the whole venue like Dora the Explorer to find the coffee machine was the best idea in a rush, so I asked my colleague. “Well where do you think the coffee machine usually is?”, the sarcastic and almost hostile reply was.
Confused about the tone in that reply, I went to look for it in the tiny kitchen already crowded by the chef and sous-chef, where they had to point it to me after asking what I was looking for.
The espresso machine was by the bar downstairs and all the coffee cups were next to it. But for some reason filter coffee had to be retrieved from the minuscule kitchen, where it was hidden behind the ice cube machine, invisible to a quick inspection of its location.
To be fair, my colleague was normally friendly. I had been warned that the bartenders can be a bit grumpy when stressed. He had worked there for a while and knew the place inside out, therefore assuming everyone else does, too.
Nevertheless, I thought to myself “How should’ve I known?”. In all the previous places I had worked at, both the filter coffee and espresso machine were located very differently. Some didn’t have filter coffee available at all. This thought stuck to me and acted as a wake-up call to think about this further.
How don’t you know?
There are defaults, and there are countless exceptions to those as well.
The knowledge we have today is a sum of all our past experiences, filtered and modified by the way we learn. Everyone has lived a different life and not everyone learns the same. Not every one of us hit our toe on furniture and not all of us still learn not to walk near it to prevent it from happening again.
We learn from the mistakes we make (I certainly have), but not everyone makes the same mistakes. Our parents teach us important things about life, but not all teach the same things and not all of us even have (both) parents. We learn a bunch of things at school, but what if you get sick and have to stay home for a week, even two and you don’t get to revise what you just missed out on?
In all of these scenarios, you miss out on some information. Sometimes, that might be “common knowledge” that most others know, but as a consequence of something, you don’t.
It shouldn’t be such a surprise that someone doesn’t know something. Instead of judging, educate.
Baobabs and common knowledge
If and when you find yourself in a situation where you know something the other one doesn’t — no matter how “obvious” it is to you — don’t judge them. Bashing someone for their “ignorance” when you don’t know their whole story (and even if you did) doesn’t get either of you anywhere. Instead, share your knowledge and educate, so the next time they’ll know.
I remember my ex-girlfriend almost getting mad at me, shocked by my ignorance because I didn’t know what a “baobab” is. After she made me look it up, I learned that it’s a giant tree, found mostly in Africa and Australia. They don’t grow here in Finland and out of all the things in this world, I’m not particularly interested in dendrology of trees on the other side of the planet.
How should I have known?
School success
Your success in school is widely measured by exams. They might not be the most accurate way to measure our knowledge, since no matter how well and hard you study, one can not simply remember everything. Let’s say you‘re taught 10,000 words in your French classes at school. You might remember 80% of those, but unluckily enough the test asks for the remaining 20%. You get an F despite all your hard work.
So if your classmate fails an exam, instead of laughing at them for being “stupid”, try to understand where and why they went wrong and help them to get it right the next time.
Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
Whether the Dalai Lama XIV is speaking about physical or mental immortality, I agree with that quote’s idea. By sharing our knowledge, we can improve as persons, help others, and learn ourselves as well.
Be a teacher, not a judge
Imagine teachers rolling their eyes and using a nasty tone of voice on their students when they don’t know the solution to a simple equation. That won’t happen because they understand that their knowledge is not that of others — not yet. Do that. Aim to be a teacher in your everyday life.
Tell those who haven’t heard, show those who haven’t seen, teach those who don’t know, and explain to those who don’t understand.
Why do we make mistakes?
Everyone makes mistakes, as this article shows. Erring is a part of human nature — nobody‘s perfect, no matter how hard they think they are.
If you’re too busy to dive into Don Norman’s Seven Stages of Action, here’s my summary of how our brain works, when we want to do something:
When you’re about to do something, your brain quickly evaluates what needs to be done, then goes through all the possible actions you’re aware of that could result in the desired outcome and picks what it considers the best one. After the action is done, it quickly checks if the action resulted in what we wanted. It works well most of the time, but not always.
You can’t always take all the possible factors into consideration. Sometimes your brain might be in a power-saving mode or occupied by something else, as it often is in the modern world. As you can guess from my description above, there are many steps from thought to action and if you get distracted at any point, chances are that you fail or the outcome isn’t what you wanted.
Different psychological biases, our values, our memories, and experiences as well as our environment, and all of its distractions can and do influence our thought process. In this age of digitalization, our brains are working overtime to process all the information fed to them, faster than they can. Our thought processes don’t look the very same as they did 20 years ago. Online stores and supermarkets are filled with choices to mess with our decision-making abilities — wanna buy cereals? Here, pick from these 30 different products. The average (US) supermarket carries over 33,000 items. No wonder if you forget about something or subconsciously pick the wrong item or buy more than you planned to.
Maybe it’s not your fault
Don Norman, the UX design legend, in his book “The Design of Everyday Things” gives many examples and explanations of how and why we make some of the most obvious mistakes. The most famous one being the “Norman Doors”, as they have been named after the author.
Ever blamed yourself or suspected someone’s intelligence for trying to pull open a door that needs to be pushed or vice versa? That’s (usually) the designer’s fault. The appearance of the door gives you hints on how to interact with it. If the door has a handle on it, it calls to be pushed, just like the ear of a cup calls to be held with your fingers. The list goes on and on.
But bad design is everywhere — design that doesn’t give us the right hints on how to use it or doesn’t even work the way we expect it to. That’s not your fault, but rather the designer’s.
I don’t expect you to remember every single word in the article, so I’ll just sum up the main idea in a nutshell:
- Don’t be too hard on yourself for making “stupid” mistakes. It’s often the fault of external factors, rather than yours, or then your brain is just giving itself a little break, which is normal and you’ll thank for it later.
- You might not know everything that the other person knows, but that applies to them as well. We’re all unique and so is our knowledge and that’s the beauty of it. It would be boring for everyone to know everything.
- Don’t judge others for not knowing something you think is “common knowledge”, but help them learn it.
Let’s make this world a better place to live with a little bit of acceptance. I challenge you to teach someone something you know, but they apparently don’t, the next time you see them struggling with it.
