Make a New Mistake

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

—Neil Gaiman

We’ve had this saying in our household for a long time–Go out and make a new mistake!

Admittedly, it can sound a little pessimistic, but really, it has been very freeing. It is a promise to try something new, not to make the same old mistakes again, but to take a risk and do something different and new, in the hopes that it will be better. But even if it’s not, it isn’t complacency and allowing things to remain stagnant and unchanged. It is a willingness to venture into new territory, to attempt the untried and untested. The only thing we can be certain of is that doing the same-old same-old will provide the same results.

Making a new mistake is the freedom to try something new without knowing if that’s the thing that is going to work. Maybe it will be another addition to the ‘Well that didn’t work” list. But then again maybe it won’t be. Perhaps we will learn something new with the attempt.

As we move into the New Year, I’d like to invite you to join me in the adventure of making new mistakes, discovering new things, and learning from the experience.

I have a list of new and scary things I’m going to push myself into trying this year. Not a list of resolutions, no, this is different. It is a set risks I’m going to take, scary things I have not done before, but I’m going to do this year. And none of them have any gaurentees on them. They could work out wonderfully. I could fall flat on my face. Most likely things will fall somewhere in between and I’ll learn a great deal. Some of those things will no doubt be things I did not really want to learn. But hopefully, some of them will be lessons that have a positive impact on the future and I will treasure them.

What about you? Is it time to make some new mistakes in 2022? Tell me in the comments.