If you’ve ever watched baseball on TV (which is rare for me, I prefer the radio), you may have seen some of the most incredible faces that athletes make. This is Pitcher Jared Weaver of the LA Angels:
He looks crazy, doesn’t he? He’s also an insanely good pitcher. He can make a ball do things just by changing how he holds it or points his elbow. It’s a gift. It’s not really a useful one to a lot of people, but it’s certainly not something I can do. He doesn’t worry about the silly faces he makes (I hope) because he can see the results are worth it.
One of my most popular tweets ever is this:
Everyone screws up code, no matter how awesome a professional you are. Accept it.
When I wrote it, I was laughing at myself for seriously bolluxing some code and pushing it live too soon, which happens to the best of us. I knew I messed up as soon as I saw the first error report, and pushed a fix right away.
What I didn’t do was worry about how it made me look.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I knew it looked bad, and it was embarrassing, but I’m not afraid of making mistakes. I didn’t let the fear of looking bad stop me from trying something new and experimenting and making a change. I knew there was a chance to end up with egg on my face, but I knew there was also a chance I would make everything perfect and ‘save the world.’ Or at least make my code awesome for more people.
We’re going to mess up. We’re going to make mistakes. We’re going to break things. While we try hard not to do that, the glory, the hero within us comes to play not when we’re perfect, but when we recover. Mistakes will be made, accidents happen, and you will screw up.
What will you do when you make a mistake?
