You Have To Get It Wrong, To Get It Right
Last June 22,2019, we had Club Officers Training for Toastmasters Club we are a member of. One of the activities is to practice being a voting judge in speech contests.
Five test speakers will deliver their speech and a group of judges will conduct the scoring. Each time the speaker finishes his speech, we have a minute to score their speech based on given criteria.
Then, we will tally the score and derive the 1st,2nd and 3rd place of the contest.
Here’s the caveat. For the ballot to be valid, the judge must fill up the names of the top 3 and sign the ballot.
It’s pretty simple. So I got mine and give it to the chief judge for the final verification.
The chief judge verified the ballot and the first four were good. But the fifth ballot got invalid. Upon checking, the ballot has no signature of the judge. Curious, I tried to look for the invalid ballot. It was mine. How can I miss out a simple instruction?
Before I began digging deeper into my mistake, the facilitator told us,
“It is a good thing that something like this happens even if it was just an exercise. At least you know what will happen if you fail to follow instructions.”
Somehow, I felt relieved.
After the exercise, I told my mentor that I was the one who missed out signing the ballot.
I thought he was kinda” scold” me. But I was surprised that he almost said the same thing the facilitator has told earlier.
“At least we know what to do when something like that happens. If the other groups did it perfectly then they will probably not learn what we have learned in the exercise today.”
What’s the moral of the story?
Sometimes, you have to get it wrong, to get it right.
Success will teach you things you need to do while failure will teach you what not to do. Both are essential to grow and learn.
But there are things that you can learn better from failure. Things like perseverance, grit, and resilience.
My advice: Don’t let the failure and mistakes go into waste. Learn from it. Bounce back. Use your new found wisdom as your benchmarks in future challenges. (and don’t forget to sign the ballot!)
