Learning to love mistakes: A valuable lesson a teacher taught me

When I think back to my school days, one particular teacher always stands out in my memory. He did something that no one else did.

Usually, when we got a test back, everyone’s attention went straight to the grade. Maybe a quick glance at the red marks, a sigh of relief or disappointment, and then the paper disappeared into a folder or the trash. The mistakes were forgotten as quickly as they were made.

In school, mistakes often come with bad grades and a sense of shame, and over time we start to believe that making mistakes is something bad. But this teacher showed us another way. After every test, he asked us to take a closer look at every single mistake. We had to go through each question we got wrong and try to solve it again, this time correctly. During that hour, we were invited to ask for help and to understand where our thinking had gone off track.

At first, I was surprised. But I quickly learned to love it. I’ve always been someone who genuinely enjoys learning, not just getting things right, but understanding why something was wrong. I felt supported. This teacher taught us something I’ll never forget: The goal is not to avoid mistakes, but to learn from them. And that a grade doesn’t define who we are.

Often when we see success in other people, we don’t see the work behind it.
We don’t see how many times they tried and didn’t succeed.

Years later, I realised how powerful his lesson truly was.

Because life, much like school, constantly gives us “tests.”
We try things, we fail, we get feedback and then we get to choose what to do with it.

Too often, we take mistakes as proof that we’re not good enough.
That we lack talent, or that maybe we should just stop trying.
But the truth is: Everyone starts at the beginning.
Even the people we admire most once stood where we are now.

Thomas Edison made thousands of unsuccessful attempts before inventing the light bulb. When someone called them failures, he replied, “I didn’t fail. Now I know a thousand ways how not to build a light bulb.”
That’s the mindset that I invite you to embrace.

It’s not about being perfect.
It’s about being curious.
About daring to look at what didn’t go as planned and asking:
“What can I learn from this? What can I do differently next time?”

Today, I try to bring that same attitude into my work and my relationships. Every time something doesn’t go as I imagined, I remind myself of that classroom. Mistakes are an opportunity to learn and grow.

So next time you stumble, pause for a moment.
What is this situation trying to teach you?
What would happen if you stopped seeing mistakes as failures and started seeing them as a chance to gather data?