Fail to succeed

I have been perfect at everything the first time I tried it.  No, wait.  That's what I've always wanted, but that isn't quite how it worked out.  I got thinking about this today when Mariah decided to teach herself how to make smoothies.  She was getting upset as the counter became covered in yogurt and strawberries, but I just pointed out that this is how you learn.  We cleaned it up together, she adjusted what she was doing, and we enjoyed some delicious smoothies.

You have to fail to succeed.  You have to fall down.  You have to be bad at what you're doing.  We know this about the simple things, like learning to ride a bike, but we seem to forget this principle when it comes to the bigger things in life.  I was a bad manager before I learned to be a good manager.  I burned things before I learned to be a good cook.  I made my fair share of relationships before I learned to be a good partner.

The only way to really know how to be good at something is by experiencing what it feels like to be bad at it, then learning how to improve.  If you're good at it without even trying, you haven't learned anything, and every experience is better when you learn something from it.

So don't be afraid to try new things for fear that you will fail at them.  You may fail.  And that is okay as long as you make the hard choice to learn from that failure, improve yourself because of it, and be better.

If you think about it, it's pretty cool to be able to turn a failure into making you a better person.