Many of my clients fear making mistakes. I don’t mean they’re a bit uneasy about it: they’re terrified of not doing things right because they imagine vague catastrophic consequences if they do something wrong. They believe the problem is their lack of confidence. In part, they’re right. But they’re also missing another trait for success.

My middle-aged client Mandy had many jobs in her life and left each one because she was unhappy, never because her work was shoddy or criticized. She was, in many ways, an outstanding employee—reliable, honest, detailed, genial, and a quick learner. But each time she left a job, she quaked at beginning a new one. “What if I can’t do it and make too many mistakes?” she worried. “What if I can’t perform the way they want me to? I need more confidence.”

While it’s true that she needed to feel more confident, it’s also true that her childhood experiences did not reinforce feeling good about herself. Mistakes and failure weren’t tolerated in her family and she never felt smart enough. Because she feared not making the grade, she never genuinely believed in herself. What she felt was the false confidence born of needing to convince herself over and over she could do something. 

While self-talk is crucial to how you view yourself and your actions, it’s not enough to push you over the finish line. Instead, we need to recognize how missteps and wrong turns pave the road to success. True confidence comes from recognizing from your own experience that you can do something. It comes from failing better and failing forward, that is, learning that each mistake clears the path for you to succeed.

I emphasized to Mandy that she’d left many jobs and how she always found a new one. Each mistake she made in taking a position or staying too long put her in a better position for her next place of employment. If she could find success in anything, it was getting jobs. And if she could get them fairly easily, what did she have to fear if she made mistakes? She, of all people, was in a position to not quake at being let go or fired because finding a new workplace came so easily to her.

Although positive self-talk and practicing visualization to boost confidence are part of a success mindset, more so is the knowledge that you can make mistakes or, even fail, and bounce back. That’s what makes for genuine, deep-seated confidence and resilience, the unshakable knowledge that you will land on your feet, that you can fall and pick yourself up, that learning starts with not knowing and ends with greater knowledge and new skills. 

Best,

Karen