Why You Should Value Your Mistakes; with High-Wire Artist Philippe Petit Video Lecture | Confessions of an Outlaw: A Creativity Workshop - Self Help Learning

If I had a university to direct and in some
ways I hope that one day to have my own foundation
where I will teach people things there will
be a course in mistakes in the sense that
I think we discard mistakes, we brush them
aside, we in a non creative way mistakes are
our best teachers.
When I make a mistake there is two things
parallel happening in my head, in my heart
and consciously I try to find the why of the
situation and very consciously I observe what
happened or, you know, recall what happens
and find sometime the myriads of details that
I didn’t pay attention to.
Or sometime it’s as simple as I was not
focusing enough, you know.
If I cut a piece of wood with a saw and not
really focused and the blade of the saw jumps
and, you know, starts scratching my finger.
What a great lesson because I maybe didn’t
observe how the fibers of the wood where maybe
I didn’t sharpen the saw correctly.
Maybe I was saying hello to a friend passing
by instead of concentrating on the curve,
you know, the width of the blade.
It’s very easy to observe a mistake and
then to backtrack and to find out where the
causes of that.
So I am always very interested.
It’s like solving a problem, you know.
It’s interesting for me to investigate what
went wrong.