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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 four 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
backyard 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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