I came across this story and I love it!
This is a story about a famous research scientist who had
made several very important medical breakthroughs. He was
being interviewed by a newspaper reporter who asked him why
he thought he was able to be so much more creative than the
average person. What set him so far apart from others?
He responded that, in his opinion, it all came from an
experience with his mother that occurred when he was about
two years old.
He had been trying to remove a bottle of
milk from the refrigerator when he lost his grip on the
slippery bottle and it fell, spilling its contents all over
the kitchen floor—a veritable sea of milk!
When his mother came into the kitchen, instead of yelling
at him, giving him a lecture, or punishing him, she said,
“Robert, what a great and wonderful mess you have made! I
have rarely seen such a huge puddle of milk. Well, the
damage has already been done. Would you like to get down
and play in the milk for a few minutes before we clean it
up?”
Indeed, he did. After a few minutes, his mother said, “You
know, Robert, whenever you make a mess like this,
eventually you have to clean it up and restore everything
to its proper order. So, how would you like to do that? We
could use a sponge, a towel, or a mop. Which do you
prefer?” He chose the sponge and together they cleaned up
the spilled milk.
His mother then said, “You know, what we have here is a
failed experiment in how to effectively carry a big milk
bottle with two tiny hands. Let’s go out in the back yard
and fill the bottle with water and see if you can discover
a way to carry it without dropping it.” The little boy
learned that if he grasped the bottle at the top near the
lip with both hands, he could carry it without dropping it.
What a wonderful lesson!
This renowned scientist then remarked that it was at that
moment that he knew he didn’t need to be afraid to make
mistakes. Instead, he learned that mistakes were just
opportunities for learning something new, which is, after
all, what scientific experiments are all about. Even if the
experiment “doesn’t work,” we usually learn something
valuable from it.
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