The Anxiety of Getting Things Wrong

 I have a sense that the education system drills it into people that getting things wrong is terrible. I was thinking about this at lunch time, in light of my own fear of criticism at work. When you think about it, it doesn't take very much to do this. For example, when marking incorrect answers, teachers will often use heavy red ink with extensive strike-throughs, which is reminiscent of the kind of red markings that plants and animals often display to tell you to "stay away" or to beware of danger. Red is the universal color of mistakes, even in the natural world. Yet, instead of seeing mistakes as opportunities to learn, the education system often acculturates people to think that all mistakes are somehow forbidden or even unforgivable.
   While we rarely have this kind of red ink in our adult life, I believe that the anxiety around making a mistake carries forward into adulthood, often to the point of becoming somewhat traumatized by it. Many people have even internalized the notion that without the anxiety around doing something wrong, one will not be sufficiently motivated to stay on the correct path in the future. I think it's an important part of one's spiritual education, however, to be able to look through the anxiety very clearly, and know that the anxiety is not itself going to harm a person. Even though that feeling is certainly uncomfortable, one need not associate it as being a death sentence.
   With the ability to stay with the anxiety, comes a different approach, and that is to question whether there is actually a permanent "me" who is making the mistake in the first place. Even when the mistake is a very bad one (as they often are, at times), is that making the person universally and always bad? Many therapists such as Ellis (2001) have brilliantly expounded upon these ideas through a more clear-minded approach to looking at one's self-judgments. According to Ellis, while it may and often is healthy to look upon one's mistakes with regret and a desire to change those mistakes into learning lessons, it's not a good idea to judge oneself as bad in the process of doing so. Even from a Buddhist perspective, this "self" to which one feels shame isn't really the true self. It's a kind of image that is the result of social habits that often collectively grow in a society, based on a society or community's shared and transmitted values.
   When I make a mistake and feel ashamed to see the reflection in the mirror, what exactly am I ashamed of? The image in the mirror is just a series of shapes and colors, and a few minutes ago, I had no reaction whatsoever to them, taking them for granted as "the image of myself". But is it really, after all? The shame I feel has nothing to do with this body at all, but it relates to associations and thoughts I have around the image of this "me". And that "me" is not a single unitary set of ideas after all. So why should I be ashamed of myself? Should I not simply feel a shame for the actions, and then work hard to correct the actions, rather than adding a layer of judgment to the image?

Ellis, Albert  (2001). Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings and Behaviors: New Directions in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.