My daughter came home from school with tears welling up in her eyes. “What happened sweetheart?”, I asked, really concerned. She is a tough kid and I rarely ever see her so disturbed. Through her sobbing and crying, I heard the words, “What if I fail?. She had taken a test at school and had forgotten to answer a question.
It broke my heart – for so many reasons. I wanted to hug her and reassure her that she was probably just going to lose a couple of points. I wanted to tell her that since she had worked really hard, she was sure to get a good grade. Yet, a huge part of me wanted her to be with that feeling – and get comfortable with it. Because the truth is, failing is inevitable… it will happen to her, just like it happens to everybody. There will be times when she would have given it her all, and still fail. But I don’t want that to stop her from trying. As Winston Churchill said, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm”.
The fear of failure cripples most of us. And though it’s never easy, failure is a far better teacher than success. I want her to embrace failure just as much, if not more, than success. I reminded her of a quote we say often, “Sometimes you win. Sometimes you learn”.
Here is a portion of a powerful video by J. K. Rowling talking about learning from failure.
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