Finally…It’s Okay to Fail!

By Lu Lewis and Edna Varner

Students who are taught that talent and ability can be developed have an entirely different attitude toward a mistake.

When we’re passed 50 (okay, way passed), we would like to think that we’ve learned life’s most important lessons.  Having done so, we are entitled to coast comfortably on those lessons into the part of our existence where we rarely make mistakes, and almost never fail at anything important.   If that’s the life the rest of you are living, somebody, please beam me up because I’m still making mistakes!

From our youth, many of us are taught (and teach our children) that failing is part of life, but it’s the really bad part.   You get an “F” on your book report.   You can’t pronounce certain words correctly.  You look awkward attempting any outdoor sport, or you’re the only one in your family who seems to have no talent for music.   What a loser!    Of course the only thing worse than failing at everything is being the junior success story who fails occasionally.    That’s the kid who doesn’t win first prize in the World War II essay contest or juxtaposes two letters at the spelling bee while trying to spell “cymotrichous”.

In a May, 2011 Education Week article,  “Why Wrong is Not So Bad,” Alina Tugend writes that we give children the wrong message about making mistakes.  Stanford University professor Carol Dweck agrees about the messages we often give our children.   “One thing I’ve learned is that kids are exquisitely attuned to the real message, and the real message is ‘Be smart.’  It’s not, ‘We love it when you struggle or when you learn and make mistakes.’” Dweck says students who are taught that talent and ability are fixed at birth don’t see the value in learning from errors – in fact, they’re afraid that making mistakes will show them up as stupid and incompetent. Students who are taught that talent and ability can be developed have an entirely different attitude toward a mistake. (The Marshall Memo).

J. K. Rowling, bestselling author of the Harry Potter series, in her 2008 commencement speech to the graduates at Harvard, shared that what she feared most when she was their age was not poverty, but failure.

“…a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale… The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.”

She went on to say to her young audience,   “I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.  However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure….You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.  Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations.  Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way.”

Rowling said that from her failures, she learned that she had a strong will and more discipline than she had suspected.   “The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive.”

Academy Award winner Denzel Washington spoke to the Class of 2011 at the University of Pennsylvania, delivering a similar message:  “Nothing in life is worthwhile unless you are willing to take risks,” he said.  “Every graduate here has the training and talent to succeed, but do you have the guts to fail?   If you don’t fail, you’re not even trying.  To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.”

We all want to succeed, but failure is not the opposite of success.   It is often a path.   Knowing that, we have to encourage our children (and ourselves) to accept failure as only part of our story.    Winston Churchill failed 6^th grade.   Thomas Edison had thousands of failed experiments before he created a light bulb that worked.  Albert Einstein’s parents and teachers believed he was mentally retarded because he was still not reading by age 7.  Famous former failure Michael Jordan wrote in his book on the pursuit of excellence,  “I can accept failure.  Everyone fails at something.  But I can’t accept not trying.” Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett affirmed that years earlier with,  “Try again.  Fail again.  Fail Better.”

We have to send the message to our children and to our own brains, that it’s okay not to be good at something.  Failure is an event in our lives.  It is not who we are.     If these words don’t make a case for rethinking the benefits of struggling and making mistakes along the way, you can add us to your list for failing to accomplish our purpose.   We will consider ourselves in very good company.