Rethinking Failure

Recently I have been plowing through my copy of John Maxwell's 3-in-1 book on leadership. There are a few good nuggets in the midst of hundreds and hundreds of platitudes and obligatory anecdotes. Here is one of those nuggets:

Mistakes mark the road to success. He who makes no mistakes makes no progress. Make sure you generate a reasonable number of mistakes. I know that comes naturally to some people, but too many people are so afraid of error that they make their lives rigid with checks and counter-checks, discourage change and, in the end, so structure themselves that they will miss the kind of offbeat opportunity that can send their life skyrocketing. So take a look at your record, and if you come to the end of a year and see that you haven't made any mistakes, ask yourself if you have tried everything you should have.

It is a cliche to say that we learn by our mistakes, so I'll state the case more strongly than that. I'll say you can't learn without mistakes. On reason some people never grow through change is that they can't stand failure. Even the best people have a lot more failure than success. The secret is that they don't let the failures upset them. They do their very best. So let the chips fall where they may, then go on to the next attempt. - John Maxwell

This was like holding a mirror up to me. I tend to be a perfectionist and so to me a "reasonable number of mistakes" would be about, oh, one or preferably none. I am admittedly rigid with "checks and counter checks."

This is going to be a difficult area for me to change and grow in. I mean, I'm an accountant for a reason. I appreciate the beauty of things tying out perfectly. But I also instinctively recognize the internal fault lines that are there with this fear of failure.