If there’s a skill worth mastering, learning from our mistakes is it. Learning from others’ mistakes is good too, and can save us plenty of missteps. But learning from the mistakes of others doesn’t prevent us from making mistakes of our own—something we’ll all do.
With each mistake comes a learning opportunity—an opportunity to grow. Learning our lesson now makes it less likely we’ll repeat the same mistake in the future. It spares those around us from repeatedly dealing with the side-effects of our errors. It keeps us humble along the way.
If we’re bound to make mistakes, and we are, we may as well get good at learning from them. Both our future-selves and those around us will be grateful we did.