View source for Nothing is set in stone

Mark is very stubborn but at the same time he is able to step back and review his own actions. If you decide on something, it doesn't meant that you can never go back. It surely means that you are going to spend some extra time in undoing something, but the alternate is to keep pushing something forwards that shouldn't be pushed. This lesson is about overcoming your own pride. People want to be right and it can be quite difficult to accept that your decision was flawed.

The important aspect here is that if you are able to undo a decision, it frees you to make other decisions. The fear of doing something wrong to the thing that you are trying very hard to create can be paralyzing. Designers have to be bold and take chances. Decisions are not irreversible. Mistakes that we make in life shouldn't be used as excuses to make more. We can and should acknowledge our own mistakes for our own good and the good of others.

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It's pretty easy to understand Mark's point. His lesson is that everyone makes mistakes, but wise people learn from them to improve themselves. I can relate to that in many ways. Every time one starts something new, mistakes happen. Every artist or scientist begins at some low level and climb up during their careers. Along the way we learn how things work, how to better predict outcomes, how to do better, how to do faster, how to better relate to others. It's a long journey for sure. I think that the important lesson that Mark is trying to teach is that once we acknowledge a mistake we are free to choose whether to learn from it or not. Now comes the question: What if we don't acknowledge it in the first place?

I've read some articles about personality disorders and in the case of narcissistic personality one fundamental problem with it is the failure to acknowledge their own mistakes (you don't have to be a narcissist to not acknowledge your own mistakes, mind you). Why? That's very complicated to answer. It goes well beyond stating that it's all because they don't want to. It's more complicated than pure will. To acknowledge oneself is hard and can be painful in some cases. In the case of narcissists there is a very complicated problem of having a false self that overshadows, or overthrows, the real self. Think about the word ''"perfection"''. What is the perfect person? Does it even exist? One of they key components of narcissistic personality is the belief that they are somehow flawless and everybody else is imperfect. That's very complicated to explain how can one's mind function like that because it's borderline delusional. As a piece of wisdom I'd say that if you are able to acknowledge your own imperfection and acknowledge others around you as equals, that's a sign of humility.

I once read somewhere that artists have to learn when to stop. If you keep on trying to perfect some work of art it'll never end. There is a point when the artist calls the day and release their work. I'm only mentioning this because perfectionism is related to acknowledging mistakes. A level for instance. There are some levels that I refused to stop working on because I wanted to make it better, and better, and change this, change that. That whole process of seeking perfection was a mistake in itself. A similar mistake is to be stubborn and fail to step back and reconsider. You fail and try again, blindly making many mistakes because you are narrow minded. I once had this idea of making the largest possible level just because I thought that by making a level which required all the features that the unreal engine could provide I'd learn everything in one project. Take a look at Mark's career. He surely have had to lead multiple sets, design thousands of cards, review thousands of ideas, make hundreds of mistakes, till he reached the level of proficiency that he has on making magic today.

This all relates to going to college. I think that in many countries families have this belief that you have to go to college and it has to be a certain field. First, there is no law that enforces people to go to college. It's a choice. If there exists a country where college is mandatory I don't know. Second, just because your dream was to be an artist, a doctor or a race car driver it doesn't mean that dreams are set in stone. Take Mark for example. His initial dream was to be a writer in Hollywood. He did go to Hollywood but it wasn't quite what he was expecting and life took him to Wizards, where he works as head designer as of 2022. What I'm telling here is that it's not wrong to dream. The error is in never reconsidering decisions you've made, in never trying out different things because you forbid yourself from ever attempting it.

The question that I presented in the first paragraph may have unfolded into another: What if we don't think that a mistake is a mistake in the first place? We often seek out for opinions and what we think is right, somebody else think it's not. Or the opposite, we think it's wrong, but somebody else thinks differently. To give a practical example look at the magic cards themselves. They, the developers and designers, often think that a card was a mistake to be made but that opinion isn't unanimous among them. Sometimes what was a mistake in the past can be seen as something else in the future. If you frequently read articles from Wizards' R&D people you are going to notice that mistakes themselves aren't set in stone. There is room to experiment and room to reconsider. What is right today can very well be considered wrong in the future. This can happen too.

Unfortunately I can't tell you how to overcome pride. How to overcome perfectionism. How to overcome fear. How to overcome feelings of regret. I don't have a recipe and I don't think the recipe even exists. Can you take a moment to contemplate and question yourself? That would be the first step.

'''Bottom note:''' What would be the worst mistake of all? Crimes. But to discuss crimes we have to dive deep into philosophical matters which are way beyond Mark's lesson.

= References =
* https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/resolutions-2009-01-05
* https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/life-lessons-part-ii-2006-03-06-0
* Dr. Frank Yeomans and the channel [https://www.youtube.com/@BorderlinerNotes/videos| Borderlinernotes]
* Dr. Ramani Durvasula and her knowledge on narcissism
* Alan Delazeri Mocellim
* Dr. Tracey Marks