I helped run a high school badminton tournament a few weeks ago. It was one of my first times running the league planner software, and I kept on messing up the match-ups between players. It was somewhat humiliating.
But my saving grace was that I recovered from the failure quickly. A saying coined by Zuckerberg is to “move fast and break things,” which always brings me solace. And with the help of my partner, we regrouped and ran the tournament as smooth as a well-oiled machine.
I can see vestiges of my current modus operandi from as early as high school. One of the reasons why my grades suffered through formal education was because I would blast through assignments and tests, with speed and lacking caution. Not great for an academic setting, yet this practice developed the resilience which keeps me alive and thriving today. I am often hard on myself for simple mistakes that everyone makes when in a rush: forgetting keys, calling the wrong branch of the restaurant, mistaking one name for another. But when I frame these little errors as signs of living, learning, progressing… I forgive myself. It’s all just star fall as I blast through the cosmos.