Learning from our Mistakes

Children are often scolded by their parents and teachers when they make a mistake. They are simply not allowed to make mistakes, and in case they still do commit them, they’re asked to keep quiet about them. They are taught to fear mistakes as if they were a poison, which is kept out of reach on the farthest corner of the highest rack so that we never reach it. Something both sinister and shameful, to be hidden from everyone else.

This lesson that we learn from our parents and teachers, figures that we look up to, keeps growing in us, like a weed. And every success pushes this weed to grow and keep growing, and each failure acts as a fertilizer to it. As we grow up, this fear of mistakes becomes a part of our life and we hide it so well from everyone else.

In life, what we nourish, grows. And it is not this weed that we are supposed to keep nourishing. It is ourselves that we are supposed to nourish and help to grow and thrive. And when it comes to ourselves, mistakes are the real manure. In order to grow and keep growing, we need to keep adding manure to ourselves, which is, we must keep making mistakes and keep learning from them. Mistakes are the fuel that truly drives success. And to handle mistakes, we need to keep the faith and have patience. I have yet to hear of any business that didn’t go through errors or make mistakes.

While I started my business I was quite unsure and even clueless on how to run it. All I had was two decades of goodwill and some looms. Finances and HR were something that I feared; they were my enemies. And even though I had a team of managers on my side, the business still suffered losses. And there even came a point where I feared that the business would have to be shut down. It was then that I started reading and through much introspection started to realize that the limitations are somewhere within my own self. And to have the business thrive, I would have to let go of these limitations. I would have to become free and flexible. Like water. It was in those trying times that I came through with the hardest realizations.

I learnt to own my mistakes.

I learnt that true transformation can occur only in times and moments of crisis, and it is the courage to do that, which really matters.

When we started the idea of giving our artisans the chance to design their rugs, we knew that there were risks involved, but we decided to go ahead and try anyway. We had, by then, already realized that making mistakes is a part of the process of transformation. We asked three weavers to design and weave a rug together. Initially, they did not get along, and that was reflected in the irregular pattern. Gradually they started to get along, and the pattern started to come together in harmony. This rug called ‘The Differences’ went on to win the German Design Award in 2016. This is what made us understand the true power of creativity and made us more confident about taking risks.

A true leader should keep faith in their employees abilities and give them the chance to make mistakes. We never know when a mistake might turn into a masterpiece

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