This wasn’t a single interaction, and I may be mixing up my personal experiences vs what others have told me vs stuff I’ve seen, but anyway.

Whenever I’m learning from a mentor or watching an instructor, it can be tremendously helpful to see them make a mistake, and more importantly, recover gracefully. This, to me, communicates a number of things.

1. Everyone, even professionals, makes mistakes sometimes.
2. Don’t be afraid to admit when you’ve made a mistake.
3. Don’t wallow in your failures but rather learn from them and grow.

The scenario that comes to mind for me is a ham radio license class where someone was demonstrating proper Morse code technique. Mic fright (or key fright) is very common for green hams, and the fear of messing up is especially prevalent when communicating via Morse. Ultimately, the instructor’s mistake demonstrated, more or less, that “Hey, relax, this is just a hobby. Nobody’s going to die if your fist isn’t perfect. Do your best. The guy at the other end is more happy that someone new is learning CW than frustrated by your sloppy sending.”

I was working at a call center, and applied to become a supervisor, I didn’t get the position.

My supervisor at the time gave me some offhand feedback about how I was approaching other people and coming off as too cocky because I was really really good at my current role, I was #1 out of over 1000 agents on my call metrics.

Not sure if it was just the right person, the right time, the right method of delivery, whatever, but it finally clicked for me. That one piece feedback changed my whole personality and has given me so much opportunity over the last 20 years.

I got the supervisor position the next time I applied.

Edit: Just wanted to add that teenagers are stupid, including myself.

Those people who died centuries (millennia) ago that were kind enough to putdown their ideas and thoughts onto paper (or some other kind of support) just to make sure that I (ok, I and a few other persons too ;)) would be able to read them and benefit from it. I appreciate that. A lot. As their writings helped a lot in becoming the person I am. Which is also why it makes me so sad to realize more and more people will never read a book, they just don’t know what they’re missing.

On a more mundane level, people being polite is one thing I appreciate a lot too and that I think is really helpful. It’s not a big thing, it’s saying ‘hi’, or just being nice to one another, not acting entitled and so on, but to me it means there is still an alternative way of life to this constant and quickly rising hate and anger that is becoming our new normal. Giving me some hope we’re not that badly screwed.