First Make A Big Mess

One of my favourite quotes is “anything worth doing well is worth doing badly at first”.

Think about it, any really important thing you have ever done in your life, you probably weren’t that great at to start with. From walking to talking to drawing and painting when we were little kids we were allowed to make a big mess, fall over lots and even use totally the wrong words and no one thought it was a big deal. Well apart from the time that I announced to my Sunday School teacher that our new Old English Sheepdog puppy was a Durex Dog – that took a bit of explaining from my mother although it wasn’t until many, many years later than I learned how wrong I had been – at the time there was a dog on TV used to advertise Dulux paint and another dog used to advertise Andrex toilet paper – you figure it out!

So when did it stop being OK to mess up? We only learn when we’re messing up. When we get things right its because we’ve done all the learning needed here and its time to move on up! And if you got it right the first time it was probably because you didn’t set a challenging enough goal. And here’s the great thing about messing up – not only do you get all the fantastic learning – but you get some really good stories too.

Here’s another favourite quote:

Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.