Being OK With Being Wrong - 'Tribes' Review pt. 1

Recently I finished reading 'Tribes' by Seth Godin.  I don't necessarily agree with everything that Seth writes, but I can say that there were some definite takeaways from this book.  

Wrong is not fatal, its part of the growth process.

What is your reaction to that statement?

At first it bothered me. I don't like being wrong...at all.  The catch-22 of this is I'm wrong quite a bit.

So I asked myself, what's the better way: to be wrong and to continue in that vein, or to learn from my mistakes and grow as a result?  The first option comes dangerously close to the definition of insanity, so clearly the second option is better.  The statement 'wrong is not fatal, its part of the growth process' is then, in my estimation, a sound statement.  It makes sense to learn from your mistakes and grow.

Imagine with me, if you will, if Isaac Newton or Steve Jobs had never learned from all of the stuff they were wrong about.  Isaac Newton, the dude who discovered calculus and pretty much wrote the book on gravity, could not have been more wrong about Alchemy but he fought through his wrong-ness until he made his breakthroughs in other areas.  Being wrong led to being very, very right.

Steve Jobs, father of Apple and all devices starting with 'i', was wrong about a lot of stuff, the Newton, Apple 3, and Apple Bandai for example.  But he knocked it out of the park on the Macbook Pro, the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

We can't let the fear of being wrong or failing stop us from trying something new.

Questions: How could not being afraid of being wrong make our ministries better?  How could we change the status quo by not settling for normal?

 [Part 1 in a series on 'Tribes' by Seth Godin]