My New Year's Wish for YOU: Make Mistakes!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Borrowing the words of the author Neil Gaiman, I offer you this very sincere and most heartfelt wish for 2019:

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Now before you get annoyed at me, think about what that means. It’s great to strive to do your best, but society’s constant emphasis on perfection as the preferred destination means that the journey itself often gets short shrift. And sometimes that journey has detours, false starts, and even dead ends that can teach us valuable lessons. Unintended (and sometimes unwanted) results can point us in new directions that, on our own, we might not have considered exploring.

Gaiman adds:

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

Personally, I think that sounds like an amazing goal for the year! So make 2019 the year that you try something different. Chase a dream. Take action. Get yourself out of whatever rut you’re in (in your professional life or in your personal life—or in both) and try something new. Take a chance. You might be pleasantly surprised by the results!

P.S. Speaking of taking chances, as I promised in my previous post, I’m trying something totally new this year myself: every day during the entire month of January, I’m writing down three things for which I am grateful. This activity is new territory for me, and from the few weeks in December when I’ve done it, it has really pushed my thinking in new and unexpected directions. If I’d been afraid to make a mistake, I might not have tried something so different from my usual routines. But I’m glad I did—I’ve learned a lot already!