The Up Side of Failure

The up side of failure. 

As I thought back on my childhood I couldn’t really remember the first time I had failed. Perhaps it was my lack of number sense that contributed to my inability to accurately do a dot-to-dot as a six year old.

 More importantly I don’t remember when I decided it was better just not to try than to fail. 

What I do know, though, is that somewhere along the way I stopped doing the things I wasn’t really good at, and pretty much stuck with the things that assured success. Somehow to me failure was something to be avoided at all costs. 

However, the other day I heard Dr. Laura gives a definition of failure that I really liked. She said, “Failure is an opportunity to try it again or do it in a different way.”

Now what I found fascinating about this point of view was that there was nothing negative about it all. I tried, I failed. So what do I want to do now?

Try it again in the same way or try a completely different approach?

As I thought about this I realized that looking at failure just as an opportunity cast it in a completely different light. 

Recently I had attempted something for the first time. Initially I felt pretty confident in my fledgling beginnings, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that I was in way over my head. 

As I thought about it I realized that if I were to continue I was going to need to put in a lot more work to make up for what I didn’t know, and I would need to be patient in my venture. It was then I had the choice to continue on or to leave it behind. 

My first attempt had failed, and I pretty much had talked myself out of trying again. I convinced myself that it was too hard, not how I wanted to spend my time, and not really worth the effort required. 

Perhaps more than anything there was no guarantee that in the end I would be successful, and I feared that my time would have been wasted in the failure. 

Except, that as much as I tried to put it out of my mind it kept creeping back begging for attention. Perhaps waiting for the words of Dr. Laura to encourage me to look at failure in a different way. 

Not so much as a negative thing to be avoided, but rather just as an opportunity.