A developer's guide to programatically overcome fear of failure
Who do you trust more?<p>Someone who never makes mistakes or someone who deals with their mistakes openly and directly?<p>We know the first one doesn't exist. Some people like to make us believe that, but it's bullshit.<p>However, one big caveat: Owning mistakes, being open about them doesn't absolve us from making them, especially not in the future. We still _made_ the mistake. Should we dwell on that or get punished? Likely not. Severity, intention and so on matter too. But should we simply not feel bad about it? "Embrace mistakes"? Not so sure about that either.<p>When we say "embrace mistakes", what we really mean is "embrace learning". Mistakes are opportunities to learn for ourselves and others indirectly.<p>We shouldn't be victims of our bad feelings and beat ourselves up. I did that for years. It crushed my confidence and well-being into submission and years after I'm still recovering from that. But the solution is not to try and make us feel good about ourselves regardless. It's not _just_ a psychological problem.<p>Mistakes happen for a reason, even if they are as simple as "I didn't write that down". They happen all the time, we can't prevent that, but what we can do is decide what kind of mistakes we want to face and ultimately what kind of problems we want to solve, be able to solve - for us and others.<p>Don't get bogged down, don't beat yourself up and don't let others beat you up for your mistakes. But make yourself aware that you can actually learn from them and decide for yourself when you want or need to put the energy into doing that.