Challenge your Limits; Learn from Mistakes

By Shirley Tsui and Tony Cheung

For Vision Youth’s counselor training on ‘Challenging Yourself, Community Engagement and Learning from Mistakes’, we have invited Toronto Police Superintendent Peter Yuen and Staff Sergeant Manny Mandeep from the Toronto Police Team to share some tips with the counselors.

To challenge yourself, Peter believes that nothing is impossible; and we should always focus on the possibilities instead of limits. There are several reasons why people tend to escape from challenges. They prefer the routine and comfort zone.   They are satisfied with mediocrity, complacent and content. They are afraid of changes and possible failure. There is lack of motivation and courage. At the same time, there are numerous reasons why people are brave enough to take up challenges. These people look for improvement; grow skills and knowledge; change the way people see themselves; improve self-esteem and self-confidence.  It is important to grow your belief.  After all, if you don’t try, you won’t know what you are capable of.

Talking about taking up challenges, Peter points out that the aim of challenge is to set a higher-than-normal expectation. The challenge does not need to be grand nor very influential.  We should always challenge our limits, instead of limiting our challenges. These questions are guidelines when we decide to challenge ourselves:

1.      Where am I at present time?

2.      How did I get here?

3.      What do I need to do?

4.      What are my barriers and opportunities?

5.      How do I measure success?

‘The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.’ Peter quoted the famous remark from Martin Luther Kong, Jr. to encourage counselors.

The second half of the training session focuses on community engagement. Community refers to a group of people, who can be defined according to its geographic location, similar interests, common affiliation or identity. Engagement is a planned process of interactions among people, which includes collective efforts and a variety of approaches. Community engagement also covers consultation, communication, education, participative democracy and working in a partnership.

To work on community engagement, we can volunteer in community, participate in political affairs or become a member in the student councils. All these events are easily discovered when we pay more attentions to our communities.

With active community engagement, diverse voices can be heard and sense of belonging can be further developed within the community. It is equally important that individuals derive personal benefits from community engagement. It provides us with mental and physical rewards. It helps improve our communication skills and self-confidence. We also gain professional experience, expand our social network and give back to the society.

In the last part, Mr. Manny Mandeep talks about the three components in learning from mistakes.  First, put yourself in situations where you can make interesting mistakes.  Second, have self-confidence to admit mistakes.  Third, be courageous about making changes.

Generally, mistakes can be classified into four types:

1.      Stupid: Absurdly dumb things that just happen, such as wearing your clothes the wrong way

2.      Simple: Mistakes that avoidable but your sequence of decisions made them inevitable, such as having the power go out because you forgot to pay the bill

3.      Involved: Mistakes that are understood but required effort to prevent, such as regularly arriving late to work

4.      Complex: Mistakes that have complicated caused and no obvious way to avoid, such as failing in a relationship

So, why can’t people learn from their mistakes? First of all, people beat themselves up over mistakes. Second, they have emotional reactions that they cannot stay rational. Third, they suffer from ‘tyranny of perfectionism’. On the other hand, we should also learn from our success, such as understanding what comprises our success and our relative reactions.

To pursue further learning and avoid mistakes in the future, we can use constructive debriefing to understand the incident and ways to improve. Constructive debriefing consists of five questions:

1.      What happened?

2.      What went well? What are you pleased with? Include redeeming situations that were going wrong?

3.      What would you do the same another time?

4.      What would you do differently?

5.      What do you think someone else would have done in your shoes?

With debriefing and reflection, it will be easier for us to learn from experience, be aware and control our emotions, search for an ‘approximate perfection and stay attentive to our inner critic.