Do you ever find yourself wishing you could have a go at something but fear that you won’t be any good at it?

A wise lady once offered me an adjustment to the familiar mantra: “If something’s worth doing…it’s worth doing badly”. My eyebrows probably knitted so much they produced a small sweater but then I began to think about it. And I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Prof. Carol Dwek, at Stanford University in the US, is famous for her work on growth mindset. Lots of studies have shown that those who embrace mistakes and keep striving to get better do far better and are far more honest than those who believe that talent is all you need. The latter group fear to expose themselves so will only have a go at things they know they can do to a standard they’re happy with.

Having a go at something is far more important than allowing your inner chimp to decide that you won’t be able to do it well enough. What is the required standard? The only reason we play, draw, sing, dance and do anything else is because it’s fun to do. It makes us feel good: we’re programmed to practise the primeval skills we’d need to survive, reproduce and communicate. It’s good for us. We also have a human need for competency, so when we’ve started something there’s an enormous reward to getting better at it. This means that we should embrace mistakes as helping us get better and actively seek the things we fear.

And just think, if you can discover the joy in ‘having a go’ and learning to embrace the mistakes as a good thing, perhaps you can share that joy with other people. After all, often the reason people don’t have a go at something is because at some level they’re afraid everyone else, the rest of the chimp troop, will laugh at them. But if everyone knows the courage it takes to have a go then people will only applaud not laugh.

So if you’re uncomfortable with the phrase ‘If something’s worth doing it’s worth doing badly’, try ‘If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing to the best of your ability’. It’s not quite so snappy but a good deal more realistic and encouraging.