LOVE, Kloudiia

It happened more than 10 years ago, when I was still in my secondary school.

Me and a group of friends from the same ECA (Extra-Curriculum Activity) were gathered together to prepare a photo album as a surprise gift for someone who had helped us tremendously on a project.

We stayed back in school till past midnight. Some of us sorted and selected all the photographs that we like to include in the album as the rest set out to do the art and crafts. It was 100% manual work. We didn’t buy a ready photo album. We bought a blank A4 size hardcover artbook and yes, with our innovation and creativity, created one from scratch.

One of the girls was good at drawing and so she was in charge of the artwork, while the others lend some helping hands. As things progressed very well, suddenly few drops of watercolour dripped and landed onto a page! We screamed “Oh no!” but it was too late as the those drops had splattered and made a odd-looking shape on an otherwise perfect page.

We were distressed. The photo album was really turning into such a wonderful piece of work, and this had to happen! Why? But, we knew very well too that blaming anyone would certainly be fruitless. Having been a superb team all along, we demonstrated the highest level of team spirit and put our brains together to solve the crisis.

Many ideas were being thrown out, like someone suggested putting a photo there to cover it up, buying some stickers and stick over it etc. All of them couldn’t work due to the restrictions and other considerations, like there weren’t shops opened at that ungodly hour to sell us stickers, for example.

Not long, the girl who was in charge came up with an idea. Since the mistake had been made, why not we make use of that “splash” and draw a bamboo on that page? In that moment, all of us pooled our heads together and took a closer look.

In that moment of realisation, we discovered that we could indeed draw a bamboo shoot as we extend the biggest dot out and converted it into a big stem! Following my friend’s fingers as she trailed an imaginery skeleton of the bamboo, we were getting more convinced by the second that this bamboo picture is going to be great.

The end result was – that page turned out to be the one all of us were most satisfied with. Not only because the bamboo looked real and alive, more so because of the way we made use of our team spirit, co-operation and never-say-die attitude to turn a crisis around into an opportunity! A chance to achieve an outcome more stellar than we had first hoped to attain.

Were we grateful for the clumsy one who dripped that water paint? Sure we were! For otherwise, who would have thought of drawing a bamboo shoot? None of us would.

Mistakes help us grow in life. Some of the most precious life lessons were made possible because of the errors, wouldn’t you agree?

Do not be afraid to make mistakes, or have failures in life. Because you never know if that may just turn out to be THE major breakthrough you could ever have. What mistakes do is to throw us out of the comfort zone and plunge us into a land of confusion as we struggle to think out of the box to develop new strategies to remedy the situation.

If things go according to plan and are smooth-sailing, will we still rack our brains? No we won’t, because we will remain in our comfort zone. Mistakes force us to leap from there and explore unchartered terrains.

How you look at the mistake you made is a matter of perspectives, which is a matter of choice. If you choose to look at yoursefl as a failure, then you have made yourself a failure. If you choose to look at it as an opportunity to take a different turn, then you may be the next miracle with the world’s greatest invention. 

This was exactly how 3Com invented the indispensable amazing stick-on notes which later spinned off into an array of other items. All because of one accidental mistake an employee made.

[tags]Mistakes, Life lessons, Perspectives,Errors,Invention,Innovation[/tags]