take the L

This is not something I say very much in real life. It is something my best friend from college likes to say, and lately I’ve decided that I really need to embody the spirit of it more. We’ve talked a lot on this Substack about my control freak tendencies: I don’t like rejection, I prefer to be in control. But also we’ve talked about how these are qualities with deep downsides and I’m working to moderate them. In that spirit, I’m practicing some humility and reminding myself that it is normal to be wrong and healthy to admit that you are wrong. Some notes:

1. I am often wrong, even about things that I am mostly right about.

2. I hate to be wrong, but hey, so does everyone.

3. The best thing I can do is to identify what the mistake was and quickly correct it.

4. After that, I should think carefully about why I made the mistake in the first place and try not to repeat it.

5. Even when my mistakes feel especially bad, they are never unique, and have been made hundreds of thousands of times by hundreds of thousands of people, if not more.