<p>"Last week, my granddaughter started kindergarten, and, as is conventional, I wished her success. I was lying. What I actually wish for her is failure. I believe in the power of failure.</p>
<p>Success is boring. Success is proving that you can do something that you already know you can do, or doing something correctly the first time, which can often be a problematical victory. First-time success is usually a fluke. First-time failure, by contrast, is expected; it is the natural order of things.</p>
<p>“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”</p>
<p>Theodore Roosevelt
“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910</p>
<p>Fear of failure leads to fear of risks. The most interesting people I know have really screwed up in some way. One of my kids has a tendency toward perfectionism. I work very hard to praise his mistakes. I try to point out that if you get something wrong, and work to understand it, then you have really accomplished something.</p>
<p>My fave quote of all time is below. It’s an example of why I get concerned when I see parents having hissy fits because their kids didn’t get some opportunity. Yes, it’s a disappointment. However, it’s not the end of the world. People who never fail are people who haven’t reached far enough.</p>
<p>"It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not disgrace to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is sin.”</p>
<p>–Dr. Benjamin Mays (fomer chaplain, Morehouse College and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr.)</p>
<p>I thought this was so appropriate at this time when we are seeing threads started by kids who don’t find their college “idyllic” after a few weeks. And parents whose kids are getting their first B’s and think maybe they should drop the class and go for something easier.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to belittle the suffering of the kids who feel lonely. But we have just come to expect everything to be perfect and stress-free from the get-go.</p>
<p>And, as to struggling in a class? My S told me about a C on a paper yesterday (and, yes, this may never have happened before). But we talked about what he learned about what the prof was looking for and I reminded him that this was just one grade. My kid is a great math/science guy and a good creative writer. But he has never been a very good report writer, by my standards. This is a writing-intensive course in technical communications. Something that will be very valuable to him in his chosen Engineering career. I celebrate the C! It means the teacher will not accept mediocre writing and my S will learn to be quite effective. That is the goal, isn’t it, of sending them off to college? Not having them get there to demonstrate that they already knew how to do it all.</p>
Absolutely! The biggest reason I wanted S1 to attend a “selective” college, is that I didn’t want anything to be too easy for him. He’s had a few learning experiences that he may have preferred to skip, but H and I think it’s great.</p>
<p>My son has played soccer since he was six or something. And during that time, he has lost WAY more games than he has won. In fact, I am not sure his AYSO teams or his CYSA teams had a winning season more than once or twice. Now in high school, his team wins WAY more games than they lose.</p>
<p>I alway told him when he was losing, that losing is more valuable than winning, as long as you played your best. Because let’s face it, dealing with winning is pretty easy. Oh darn, I won. Gee, everyone is congratulating me. But losing, now that is hard. And life will deal out losses, so it’s important to learn how to accept and learn from loss.</p>
<p>“Genius? Nothing! Sticking to it is the genius! … I’ve failed my way to success.” - Thomas Edison</p>
<p>I once had a boss who told me if I was never having or making problems I probably was not challenging myself. </p>
<p>I too am grateful when kids are given teacher feedback that sends the message “not the quality I expect.” Too often mediocre work is considered “good enough;” I appreciate teachers who push for excellence.</p>
<p>Walt Disney recommended that everyone have at least one major failure while they’re young. If he had not failed at a number of projects, he would never have conceived of Mickey Mouse.</p>
<p>When you see those commercials about “depression” medication</p>
<p>are you happy
do you like your job
are you tired</p>
<p>we give the impression that we are supposed to be joyous, vibrant, happy, content, 100% of the time, and that is just not possible or realisitic</p>
<p>same with failure- people think failure is this “thing” that somehow is equated with not being a good person. </p>
<p>When I read threads about kids who everything is going perfectly for, i really wonder, because something is not perfect somewhere, but its covered up</p>
<p>In our family, we have learned to take “failure”- not winning a class election- and figuring out something else</p>
<p>It is often those “failures”- something not coming through at school, getting cut from a team, not doing well on a paper, that creates opportunity, if one is wiling to look for it</p>