How to Own Your Mistakes Like the Leaning Tower of Pisa

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is often described as an architectural catastrophe. And yet, five million tourists visit this catastrophe every year, raking in about 21 million Euros per annum.

What can we learn from this?

Mistakes have value. Your personal history, no matter how catastrophic, is unique – even more unique than a leaning tower that doesn’t fall. As long as you’re still standing, still living, and yes, still leaning… you have something to give to the world.

Sometimes (not always, but sometimes) instead of trying to change our ‘flaws’, we serve ourselves and the world better to ask ourselves how we can own them – how we can lean into them.

Think of something about yourself (not your circumstances – yourself) that you’ve been wishing you could change. It could be that you don’t need to change who you are – but instead you need to become more of who you are.

If you’re an engineer with an artistic spirit, could you lean into that spirit in your engineering?

Maybe you’re a female who’s been going on lots of first dates but never getting that second date… you’re always trying to say the ‘right words’ and act feminine – but inside you’d rather be talking about sports and drinking beer… what if you just leaned in to that side of yourself?

Or what if you’re a parent having trouble communicating with your teenage children, because you don’t want them to see your emotional ‘flaws’ or you don’t want to admit your past mistakes… What would happen if you opened up about those flaws and mistakes and leaned into them? What incredible lifelong lessons might you be able to pass on to your children by owning your mistakes (and catastrophes) like the Leaning Tower of Pisa?

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