Failures And Mistakes Best Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Failures And Mistakes Best. Here they are! All 79 of them:

A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
B.F. Skinner
I’m afraid of committing myself,” she thought to herself. “When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.” “Don’t bother trying to explain your emotions. Live everything as intensely as you can and keep whatever you felt as a gift from God. The best way to destroy the bridge between the visible and invisible is by trying to explain your emotions.” “But how will I know who my Soulmate is?” Brida felt that this was one of the most important questions she had ever asked in her life. “By taking risks” she said to Brida. ‘ By risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in you search for Love. As long as you keep looking, you will triumph in the end.” Nothing is completely wrong. Even a broken watch is right twice a day.
Paulo Coelho (Brida)
A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
Mary Frame (Imperfect Chemistry (Imperfect, #1))
We cannot know for certain how long we have here. We cannot foresee the trials or misfortunes that will test us along the way. We cannot know God's plan for us. What we can do is to live out our lives as best we can with purpose, and love, and joy. We can use each day to show those who are closest to us how much we care about them, and treat others with the kindness and respect that we wish for ourselves. We can learn from our mistakes and grow from our failures. And we can strive at all costs to make a better world, so that someday, if we are blessed with the chance to look back on our time here, we can know that we spent it well; that we made a difference; that our fleeting presence had a lasting impact on the lives of other human beings.
Barack Obama
The best lessons learned are from other peoples mistakes.
Melissa Bradley
There was no correcting past mistakes, especially since he could see no real 'mistakes' he had made. He had done the best he could, and that had proven insufficient.
Brandon Sanderson (The Well of Ascension (Mistborn, #2))
It does not matter that the “intentions” of individual educators were noble. Forget about intentions. What any institution, or its agents, “intend” for you is secondary. Our world is physical. Learn to play defense—ignore the head and keep your eyes on the body. Very few Americans will directly proclaim that they are in favor of black people being left to the streets. But a very large number of Americans will do all they can to preserve the Dream. No one directly proclaimed that schools were designed to sanctify failure and destruction. But a great number of educators spoke of “personal responsibility” in a country authored and sustained by a criminal irresponsibility. The point of this language of “intention” and “personal responsibility” is broad exoneration. Mistakes were made. Bodies were broken. People were enslaved. We meant well. We tried our best. “Good intention” is a hall pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the Dream.
Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me (One World Essentials))
Some of the best lessons we ever learn, we learn from our mistakes and failures. The error of the past is the success and wisdom of the future.
Tryon Edwards
A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying. –B.F. Skinner
Mary Frame (Imperfect Chemistry (Imperfect, #1))
If I don’t succeed, I will try again and never stop trying. When I succeed, I will again explore new opportunities.
Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
Mitchell Maxwell’s Maxims • You have to create your own professional path. There’s no longer a roadmap for an artistic career. • Follow your heart and the money will follow. • Create a benchmark of your own progress. If you never look down while you’re climbing the ladder you won’t know how far you’ve come. • Don’t define success by net worth, define it by character. Success, as it’s measured by society, is a fleeting condition. • Affirm your value. Tell the world “I am an artist,” not “I want to be an artist.” • You must actively live your dream. Wishing and hoping for someday doesn’t make it happen. Get out there and get involved. • When you look into the abyss you find your character. • Young people too often let the fear of failure keep them from trying. You have to get bloody, sweaty and rejected in order to succeed. • Get your face out of Facebook and into somebody’s face. Close your e-mail and pick up the phone. Personal contact still speaks loudest. • No one is entitled to act entitled. Be willing to work hard. • If you’re going to buck the norm you’re going to have to embrace the challenges. • You have to love the journey if you’re going to work in the arts. • Only listen to people who agree with your vision. • A little anxiety is good but don’t let it become fear, fear makes you inert. • Find your own unique voice. Leave your individual imprint on the world, not a copy of someone else. • Draw strength from your mistakes; they can be your best teacher.
Mitchell Maxwell
Damage control is part of life. It would be better to never make a mistake, but once it's made it's best to handle it with grace and humility. Sometimes that shows others more than our failures ever could.
Rev. Kellen Roggenbuck
He thinks that the game may have earned those metaphors. It's slow and often seems pointless. It's beautiful, when it isn't a mess. There's a vast ocean of mercy for mistakes: getting hits half the time is nothing short of a miracle, and even the best fielders are expected to have errors. The inevitability of failure is built into the game.
Cat Sebastian (You Should Be So Lucky)
It is said that there are four kinds of horses: excellent ones, good ones, poor ones, and bad ones. The best horse will run slow and fast, right and left, at the driver’s will, before it sees the shadow of the whip; the second best will run as well as the first one does, just before the whip reaches its skin; the third one will run when it feels pain on its body; the fourth will run after the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones. You can imagine how difficult it is for the fourth one to learn how to run! When we hear this story, almost all of us want to be the best horse. If it is impossible to be the best one, we want to be the second best. That is, I think, the usual understanding of this story, and of Zen. You may think that when you sit in zazen you will find out whether you are one of the best horses or one of the worst ones. Here, however, there is a misunderstanding of Zen. If you think the aim of Zen practice is to train you to become one of the best horses, you will have a big problem. This is not the right understanding. If you practice Zen in the right way it does not matter whether you are the best horse or the worst one. When you consider the mercy of Buddha, how do you think Buddha will feel about the four kinds of horses? He will have more sympathy for the worst one than for the best one. When you are determined to practice zazen with the great mind of Buddha, you will find the worst horse is the most valuable one. In your very imperfections you will find the basis for your firm, way-seeking mind. Those who can sit perfectly physically usually take more time to obtain the true way of Zen, the actual feeling of Zen, the marrow of Zen. But those who find great difficulties in practicing Zen will find more meaning in it. So I think that sometimes the best horse may be the worst horse, and the worst horse can be the best one. If you study calligraphy you will find that those who are not so clever usually become the best calligraphers. Those who are very clever with their hands often encounter great difficulty after they have reached a certain stage. This is also true in art and in Zen. It is true in life. So when we talk about Zen we cannot say, 'He is good,' or 'He is bad,' in the ordinary sense of the words. The posture taken in zazen is not the same for each of us. For some it may be impossible to take the cross-legged posture. But even though you cannot take the right posture, when you arouse your real, way-seeking mind, you can practice Zen in its true sense. Actually it is easier for those who have difficulties in sitting to arouse the true way-seeking mind that for those who can sit easily.
Shunryu Suzuki
You are never defeated in life, you are only a learner.
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
The best defense is great offense. . .We fight through our mistakes and failures by maximizing our forward motion.
Wayde Goodall (Why Great Men Fall)
In the past, my brain could only compute perfection or failure—nothing in between. So words like competent, acceptable, satisfactory, and good enough fell into the failure category. Even above average meant failure if I received an 88 out of 100 percent on an exam, I felt that I failed. The fact is most things in life are not absolutes and have components of both good and bad. I used to think in absolute terms a lot: all, every, or never. I would all of the food (that is, binge), and then I would restrict every meal and to never eat again. This type of thinking extended outside of the food arena as well: I had to get all of the answers right on a test; I had to be in every extracurricular activity […] The ‘if it’s not perfect, I quit’ approach to life is a treacherous way to live. […] I hadn’t established a baseline of competence: What gets the job done? What is good enough? Finding good enough takes trial and error. For those of us who are perfectionists, the error part of trial and error can stop us dead in our tracks. We would rather keep chasing perfection than risk possibly making a mistake. I was able to change my behavior only when the pain of perfectionism became greater than the pain of making an error. […] Today good enough means that I’m okay just the way I am. I play my position in the world. I catch the ball when it is thrown my way. I don’t always have to make the crowd go wild or get a standing ovation. It’s good enough to just catch the ball or even to do my best to catch it. Good enough means that I finally enjoy playing the game.
Jenni Schaefer (Goodbye Ed, Hello Me: Recover from Your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life)
Out of love and desire to protect our children's self-esteem, we have bulldozed every uncomfortable bump and obstacle out of the way, clearing the manicured path we hoped would lead to success and happiness. Unfortunately, in doing so we have deprived our children of the most important lessons of childhood. The setbacks, mistakes, miscalculations, and failures we have shoved out of our children's way are the very experiences that teach them how to be resourceful, persistent, innovative and resilient citizens of this world.
Jessica Lahey (The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed)
A failure is not always a mistake; it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying!
Douglas Frantz (Celebration, U.S.A.: Living in Disney's Brave New Town)
We are all failures—at least, all the best of us are. —J. M. BARRIE
John C. Maxwell (Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success)
Your best teachers are not in school. Your best teachers are the daily challenges you tackle, the things you explore and the failures you overcome.
Nicky Verd (Disrupt Yourself Or Be Disrupted)
We think our parents are in charge, right? Like they know what they’re doing? But the truth is, they’re making it up as they go along, just like we are. Just like everyone. If we judge them by their worst mistakes, they’re all, like, gargantuan failures. Maybe you should try judging your mom by her intentions, by whether she, like, loves you and is doing her best.
Marisa de los Santos (Belong to Me (Love Walked In, #2))
But the best managers expect their people to make mistakes, and instead of replacing staff constantly, they recognize that it is more efficient to teach people how to cope with their failures and learn from their
Alan Loy McGinnis (Bringing Out the Best in People: How To Enjoy Helping Others Excel)
You never fail if you know in your heart that you did the best of which you are capable. I did my best. That is all I could do. Are you going to make mistakes? Of course. But it is not failure if you make the full effort.
John Wooden (Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court)
As you pursue your career, your efforts may sometimes meet with failure. Don’t be discouraged -- one of the best ways to learn how to do anything is to make mistakes. It took time and a lot of errors before I achieved any successes.
Richard Branson
Ethan’s parents constantly told him how brainy he was. “You’re so smart! You can do anything, Ethan. We are so proud of you, they would say every time he sailed through a math test. Or a spelling test. Or any test. With the best of intentions, they consistently tethered Ethan’s accomplishment to some innate characteristic of his intellectual prowess. Researchers call this “appealing to fixed mindsets.” The parents had no idea that this form of praise was toxic.   Little Ethan quickly learned that any academic achievement that required no effort was the behavior that defined his gift. When he hit junior high school, he ran into subjects that did require effort. He could no longer sail through, and, for the first time, he started making mistakes. But he did not see these errors as opportunities for improvement. After all, he was smart because he could mysteriously grasp things quickly. And if he could no longer grasp things quickly, what did that imply? That he was no longer smart. Since he didn’t know the ingredients making him successful, he didn’t know what to do when he failed. You don’t have to hit that brick wall very often before you get discouraged, then depressed. Quite simply, Ethan quit trying. His grades collapsed. What happens when you say, ‘You’re so smart’   Research shows that Ethan’s unfortunate story is typical of kids regularly praised for some fixed characteristic. If you praise your child this way, three things are statistically likely to happen:   First, your child will begin to perceive mistakes as failures. Because you told her that success was due to some static ability over which she had no control, she will start to think of failure (such as a bad grade) as a static thing, too—now perceived as a lack of ability. Successes are thought of as gifts rather than the governable product of effort.   Second, perhaps as a reaction to the first, she will become more concerned with looking smart than with actually learning something. (Though Ethan was intelligent, he was more preoccupied with breezing through and appearing smart to the people who mattered to him. He developed little regard for learning.)   Third, she will be less willing to confront the reasons behind any deficiencies, less willing to make an effort. Such kids have a difficult time admitting errors. There is simply too much at stake for failure.       What to say instead: ‘You really worked hard’   What should Ethan’s parents have done? Research shows a simple solution. Rather than praising him for being smart, they should have praised him for working hard. On the successful completion of a test, they should not have said,“I’m so proud of you. You’re so smart. They should have said, “I’m so proud of you. You must have really studied hard”. This appeals to controllable effort rather than to unchangeable talent. It’s called “growth mindset” praise.
John Medina (Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five)
Suppose you are particularly rich and well-to-do, and say on that last day, 'I am very rich; I am tolerably well known; I have lived all my life in the best society, and, thank Heaven, come of a most respectable family. I have served my King and country with honour. I was in Parliament for several years, where, I may say, my speeches were listened to, and pretty well received. I don't owe any man a shilling: on the contrary, I lent my old college friend, Jack Lazarus, fifty pounds, for which my executors will not press him. I leave my daughters with ten thousand pounds a piece--very good portions for girls: I bequeath my plate and furniture, my house in Baker Street, with a handsome jointure, to my widow for her life; and my landed property, besides money in the Funds, and my cellar of well-selected wine in Baker Street, to my son. I leave twenty pound a year to my valet; and I defy any man after I am gone to find anything against my character.' Or suppose, on the other hand, your swan sings quite a different sort of dirge, and you say, 'I am a poor, blighted, disappointed old fellow, and have made an utter failure through life. I was not endowed either with brains or with good fortune: and confess that I have committed a hundred mistakes and blunders. I own to having forgotten my duty many a time. I can't pay what I owe. On my last bed I lie utterly helpless and humble: and I pray forgiveness for my weakness, and throw myself with a contrite heart at the feet of the Divine Mercy.' Which of these two speeches, think you, would be the best oration for your own funeral? Old Sedley made the last; and in that humble frame of mind, and holding by the hand of his daughter, life and disappointment and vanity sank away from under him.
William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair)
I’ve often thought that parents and schools overemphasize the value of having the right answers all the time. It seems to me that the best students in school tend to be the worst at learning from their mistakes, because they have been conditioned to associate mistakes with failure instead of opportunity.
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
(...) You Sophotechs are smarter than I am; why did you let me do such a foolish thing?” “We answer every question our resources and instruction parameters allow; we are more than happy to advise you, when and if we are asked.” “That’s not what I’m thinking of, and you know it.” “You are thinking we should use force to defend you against yourself against your will? That is hardly a thought worth thinking, sir. Your life has exactly the value you yourself place on it. It is yours to damage or ruin as you wish.” (...) “Is that another hint? Are you saying I’m destroying my life? People at the party, twice now, have said or implied that I’m going to endanger the Oecumene itself. Who stopped me?” “Not I. While life continues, it cannot be made to be without risk. The assessment of whether or not a certain risk is worth taking depends on subjective value-judgments. About such judgments even reasonable men can differ. We Sophotechs will not interfere with such decisions. (...) If we were to overrule your ownership of your own life, your life, would, in effect, become our property, and you, in effect, would become merely the custodian or trustee of that life. Do you think you would value it more in such a case, or less? And if you valued it less, would you not take greater risks and behave more self-destructively? If, on the other hand, each man’s life is his own, he may experiment freely, risking only what is his, till he find his best happiness.” “I see the results of failed experiments all around us, in these cylinders. I see wasted lives, and people trapped in mind sets and life forms which lead nowhere.” “While life continues, experimentation and evolution must also. The pain and risk of failure cannot be eliminated. The most we can do is maximize human freedom, so that no man is forced to pay for another man’s mistakes, so that the pain of failure falls only on he who risks it. And you do not know which ways of life lead nowhere. Even we Sophotechs do not know where all paths lead.” “How benevolent of you! We will always be free to be stupid.” “Cherish that freedom, young master; it is basic to all others.
John C. Wright (The Golden Age (Golden Age, #1))
It does not matter what I believe. The past is done. Hope is irrelevant. We measure success and failure in history with a cost of lives. Penicillin saved people, and the world wars exterminated them. Success and failure. Feelings, regrets, the point where they knew they made mistakes...it is interesting but unfortunately, irrelevant. Did they go to their death and grieve for what they did? Did the makers of the atomic bomb grieve for the destruction they dedicated their lives towards creating? Who cares? They did it. Whether they knew what they were creating, or whether they talked themselves into believing it was for the best, the glory of history is being able to view it in black-and-white. However honorable one's initial intention, a villain will always be a villain.
Caroline Hanson (Love Is Mortal (Valerie Dearborn, #3))
The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition. We decide what we will make of each and every situation. Our perceptions are the thing that we're in complete control of. When people panic, they make mistakes.They become unresponsive and stop thinking clearly. They just react. If an emotion can't change the condition or the situation you're dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one. Perspective is everything. That is, when you can break apart something, or look at it from some new angle, it loses its power over you. Focusing exclusively on what is in our power magnifies and enhances our power. But every ounce of energy directed at things we can't actually influence is wasted - self-indulgent and self-destructive. Our best ideas come from where obstacles illuminate new options. Failure puts you in corners you have to think your way out of. It is a source of breakthroughs. True will is quiet humility, resilience and flexibility. The other kind of will is weakness, disguised by bluster and ambition. See which lasts longer under the hardest of obstacles.
Ryan Holiday (The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph)
The Best Love that you can give is to love yourself, in spite of your mistakes, in spite of your failures and in spite of your shortcomings. We are who we are, all we have to be is the best we are and rise from that point. Nobody can dictate who you are supposed to be, unless you give them that power. Embrace who you are and embrace those who love you "AS IS" Sharlene R. Prince, The Royalty Mindset Coach
Sharlene R. Prince
DON’T BE SO HARD ON YOURSELF. I can bring good even out of your mistakes. Your finite mind tends to look backward, longing to undo decisions you have come to regret. This is a waste of time and energy, leading only to frustration. Instead of floundering in the past, release your mistakes to Me. Look to Me in trust, anticipating that My infinite creativity can weave both good choices and bad into a lovely design. Because you are human, you will continue to make mistakes. Thinking that you should live an error-free life is symptomatic of pride. Your failures can be a source of blessing, humbling you and giving you empathy for other people in their weaknesses. Best of all, failure highlights your dependence on Me. I am able to bring beauty out of the morass of your mistakes. Trust Me, and watch to see what I will do.
Sarah Young (Jesus Calling, with Scripture References: Enjoying Peace in His Presence (A 365-Day Devotional) (Jesus Calling®))
Be careful praising for failures or mistakes. Saying things like “Well done!” “You did your best!” “Better luck next time!” can be heard as pity. Focus on what they did accomplish and how it can be worked on—“I know you missed the goal, but it was very close! Let’s get out and practice next week so you’ll get it next time! Remember, practice is the key!” By focusing on the effort involved in learning, we create a growth mind-set.
Jessica Joelle Alexander (The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know About Raising Confident, Capable Kids)
I have had so many spectacular failures, but looking back, I can see how each of them led me a little closer to doing what I actually wanted to do. Years before I was ready to write a book of my own, I bungled two opportunities to co-write cookbooks with other people. These mistakes haunted me, and I was sure I’d never get to write another book. But I waited, and I persisted, and after 17 years I wrote the book I’d always dreamt of.
Timothy Ferriss (Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World)
Look ahead It’s tempting to go through life looking in the rearview mirror. When you are always looking back, you become focused on what didn’t work out, on who hurt you, and on the mistakes you’ve made, such as: “If only I would have finished college.” “If only I’d spent more time with my children.” “If only I’d been raised in a better environment.” As long as you’re living in regret, focused on the negative things of the past, you won’t move ahead to the bright future God has in store. You need to let go of what didn’t work out. Let go of your hurts and pains. Let go of your mistakes and failures. You can’t do anything about the past, but you can do something about right now. Whether it happened twenty minutes ago or twenty years ago, let go of the hurts and failures and move forward. If you keep bringing the negative baggage from yesterday into today, your future will be poisoned. You can’t change what’s happened to you. You may have had an unfair past, but you don’t have to have an unfair future. You may have had a rough start, but it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. Don’t let a hurtful relationship sour your life. Don’t let a bad break, a betrayal, a divorce, or a bad childhood cause you to settle for less in life. Move forward and God will pay you back. Move forward and God will vindicate you. Move forward and you’ll come into a new beginning. Nothing that’s happened to you is a surprise to God. The loss of a loved one didn’t catch God off guard. God’s plan for your life did not end just because your business didn’t make it, or a relationship failed, or you had a difficult child. Here’s the question: Will you become stuck and bitter, fall into self-pity, blame others, and let the past poison your future? Or will you shake it off and move forward, knowing your best days are still ahead? The next time you are in your car, notice that there’s a big windshield in the front and a very small rearview mirror. The reason the front windshield is so big and the rearview mirror is so small is that what’s happened in the past is not nearly as important as what is in your future. Where you’re going is a lot more important than where you’ve been.
Joel Osteen (You Can You Will: 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner)
Here is a typical story about Mr. John Jones. Mr. Jones works in an office. He had hoped for a little raise but his hope, as hopes often are, was disappointed. The salaries of some of his colleagues were raised but not his. Mr. Jones could not take it calmly. He worried and worried and finally suspected that Director Brown was responsible for his failure in getting a raise. We cannot blame Mr. Jones for having conceived such a suspicion. There were indeed some signs pointing to Director Brown. The real mistake was that, after having conceived that suspicion, Mr. Jones became blind to all signs pointing in the opposite direction. He worried himself into firmly believing that Director Brown was his personal enemy and behaved so stupidly that he almost succeeded in making a real enemy of the director. The trouble with Mr. John Jones is that he behaves like most of us. He never changes his major opinions. He changes his minor opinions not infrequently and quite suddenly; but he never doubts any of his opinions, major or minor, as long as he has them. He never doubts them, or questions them, or examines them critically—he would especially hate critical examination, if he understood what that meant. Let us concede that Mr. John Jones is right to a certain extent. He is a busy man; he has his duties at the office and at home. He has little time for doubt or examination. At best, he could examine only a few of his convictions and why should he doubt one if he has no time to examine that doubt? Still, don’t do as Mr. John Jones does. Don’t let your suspicion, or guess, or conjecture, grow without examination till it becomes ineradicable. At any rate, in theoretical matters, the best of ideas is hurt by uncritical acceptance and thrives on critical examination. 2. A mathematical example. Of all quadrilaterals with
George Pólya (How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method (Princeton Science Library))
In the beginning, there’s a blank mind. Then that mind gets an idea in it, and the trouble begins, because the mind mistakes the idea for the world. Mistaking the idea for the world, the mind formulates a theory and, having formulated a theory, feels inclined to act. Because the idea is always only an approximation of the world, whether that action will be catastrophic or beneficial depends on the distance between the idea and the world. Mass media’s job is to provide this simulacra of the world, upon which we build our ideas. There’s another name for this simulacra-building: storytelling. Megaphone Guy is a storyteller, but his stories are not so good. Or rather, his stories are limited. His stories have not had time to gestate—they go out too fast and to too broad an audience. Storytelling is a language-rich enterprise, but Megaphone Guy does not have time to generate powerful language. The best stories proceed from a mysterious truth-seeking impulse that narrative has when revised extensively; they are complex and baffling and ambiguous; they tend to make us slower to act, rather than quicker. They make us more humble, cause us to empathize with people we don’t know, because they help us imagine these people, and when we imagine them—if the storytelling is good enough—we imagine them as being, essentially, like us. If the story is poor, or has an agenda, if it comes out of a paucity of imagination or is rushed, we imagine those other people as essentially unlike us: unknowable, inscrutable, inconvertible. Our venture in Iraq was a literary failure, by which I mean a failure of imagination. A culture better at imagining richly, three-dimensionally, would have had a greater respect for war than we did, more awareness of the law of unintended consequences, more familiarity with the world’s tendency to throw aggressive energy back at the aggressor in ways he did not expect. A culture capable of imagining complexly is a humble culture. It acts, when it has to act, as late in the game as possible, and as cautiously, because it knows its own girth and the tight confines of the china shop it’s blundering into. And it knows that no matter how well-prepared it is—no matter how ruthlessly it has held its projections up to intelligent scrutiny—the place it is headed for is going to be very different from the place it imagined. The shortfall between the imagined and the real, multiplied by the violence of one’s intent, equals the evil one will do.
George Saunders (The Braindead Megaphone)
He turned from the window, came and stood directly in front of me. He looked up at me, smiled, and said, “Well, you probably should have let them continue on.” It was not the response I was expecting, but in the years to come I would realize that the greatness of Dave Petraeus was his ability to shoulder the missteps and even the failures of his subordinates: to build loyalty through his personal sense of command responsibility. He knew that both Erwin and I were doing our best. We had made a mistake, one that he knew we would correct and learn from. But now was not the time for an ass chewing, but the time for understanding.
William H. McRaven (Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations)
Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for what happened. For the mistakes you made. For your poor choices. For not showing up the way you needed to. For being the person you wanted to be. You're human. You did the best you could in the moment given what you knew and what you had, and that's all you can ask for yourself. You're still learning. You're still finding your way. That takes time. And you're allowed to give yourself that time. You're allowed to show up in the world imperfectly. You're allowed to fail at things you tried hard for. You're allowed to realize you made the wrong decision. You're allowed to be someone who's still figuring out their path and their purpose. You're allowed to forgive yourself. You can't go back and change the decisions you've made, but you can choose what you do today. You can keep choosing, again and again. You can start over. And that's where your power is--in today. So no more beating yourself up. No more going over and over it again in your head and torturing yourself with the past. What happened is over, and all the shame and self-hatred in the world won't undo that. Today, you're starting over. Today, you're moving forward with the new knowledge and experiences you have. Today, you can be the person you want to be and live the life you want to live. You're not a bad person. You're not a disappointment or a failure.
Daniell Koepke (Daring To Take Up Space)
People learn best and fastest from making their own mistakes and fixing them. It’s painful to watch a child flounder, but in the long run children become more resilient and resourceful if they have to deal with failure once in a while. One of the biggest fears of today’s business strategists is that we are producing a coddled workforce of straight “A” students who are afraid to go out on a limb for fear they’ll fall. American innovation was born out of metaphorical scraped knees and bloody noses. A generation that’s been told they shouldn’t even touch a doorknob without applying antibacterial hand sanitizer may not have the rough and tumble qualities needed to compete in a global dog-eat-dog economy.
Lynne C. Lancaster (The M-Factor: How the Millennial Generation Is Rocking the Workplace – From Generational Experts: Understanding Born 1982-2000 Talent)
I hope you'll make mistakes. If you make mistakes, it means you're out there doing something. I escaped from school as soon as I could, when the prospect of four more years of enforced learning before I could become the writer I wanted to be, seemed stifling. I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it all up as I went along. They just read what I wrote and they paid me for it or they didn't. The nearest thing I had, was a list I made when I was about 15, of everything I wanted to do. I wanted to write an adult novel, a children's book, a comic, a movie, record an audio-book, write an episode of Doctor Who, and so on. I didn't have a career, I just did the next thing on the list. When you start out in the arts, you have no idea what you're doing. This is great. People who know what they're doing, know the rules, and they know what is possible and what is impossible. You do not, and you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts, were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible, by going beyond them, and you can. If you don't know it's impossible, it's easier to do, and because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that particular thing again. That's much harder than it sounds, and sometimes, in the end, so much easier than you might imagine, because normally, there are things you have to do before you can get to the place you want to be. When you start out, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thick-skinned. The things I did because I was excited and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I've never regretted the time I spent on any of them. If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that, whether you're a musician or a photographer, a fine artist, or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, singer, a designer, whatever you do, you have one thing that's unique, you have the ability to make art. For me, for so many of the people I've known, that's been a lifesaver the ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times, and it gets you through the other ones. The one thing that you have, that nobody else has, is you! Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw, and build, and play, and dance and live, as only you can. Do what only you can do best, make good art.
Neil Gaiman
The truth is that everyone has some level of fear of commitment and being vulnerable, but he allows it to transcend everything. Unfortunately he has a fear of failure and making mistakes, hence why he maintains a best of both worlds position. He’s thinking “If I’m not in it and minimising the impact on me, how the hell can I be impacting her so much? He doesn’t genuinely believe that anything is his fault - most things are ‘seemingly’ totally out of his control and a byproduct of the interaction and the other person not safeguarding themselves. He may assume that because he’s safeguarding himself that you are and that if you’re not, it’s some sort of ‘fault’ in you. He won’t be accountable as it equates to being vulnerable so if you call him on his behaviour he’ll only turn it around on you or deny it. Being noncommittal means that when he thinks about ‘sticking’ with you, he panics that there may be a better option. When you tell him to “Jog on” he panics that you are his best option, so he uses fear to continue keeping his options open.
Natalie Lue (Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl)
I wish you to know that you are not ( in fact never will be) going backwards. You cannot undo your good or bad deeds & unlearn all that you took so long to learn. Darling listen – Once you squeeze toothpaste out, you cannot put it back into the tube, whoever you may be. You can’t go back in time to reverse what you have already said or done. Be careful of it! But the good news is that everything, good & bad, even your stupidity, mistakes & failures are a part of your progress (unless it was intentional or planned wrongdoing). If you don’t get the desired success immediately, you will learn & if necessary you will learn the same lesson again. Sweetheart, you are always a product of the lessons that you’ve learned. You are what you are, perhaps more wiser, stronger & full of life today because you went through something terrible & survived a bunch of rainstorms & kept walking with humbleness. I wish & hope that you are going to be more driven than ever & be telling a different story very soon. One of victory over everything, success, healing, health, abundance, love, happiness, peace & great joy. Enjoy your journey & think of the bigger picture. Keep your intentions pure & Keep doing your best every day!
Rajesh Goyal
Free spirits, the ambitious, ex-socialists, drug users, and sexual eccentrics often find an attractive political philosophy in libertarianism, the idea that individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics and government. Libertarianism offers its believers a clear conscience to do things society presently restrains, like make more money, have more sex, or take more drugs. It promises a consistent formula for ethics, a rigorous framework for policy analysis, a foundation in American history, and the application of capitalist efficiencies to the whole of society. But while it contains substantial grains of truth, as a whole it is a seductive mistake. . . . The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. . . . Libertarians try to get around this fact that freedom is not the only good thing by trying to reduce all other goods to it through the concept of choice, claiming that everything that is good is so because we choose to partake of it. Therefore freedom, by giving us choice, supposedly embraces all other goods. But this violates common sense by denying that anything is good by nature, independently of whether we choose it. . . . So even if the libertarian principle of “an it harm none, do as thou wilt,” is true, it does not license the behavior libertarians claim. Consider pornography: libertarians say it should be permitted because if someone doesn’t like it, he can choose not to view it. But what he can’t do is choose not to live in a culture that has been vulgarized by it. . . . There is no need to embrace outright libertarianism just because we want a healthy portion of freedom, and the alternative to libertarianism is not the USSR, it is America’s traditional liberties. . . . Paradoxically, people exercise their freedom not to be libertarians. The political corollary of this is that since no electorate will support libertarianism, a libertarian government could never be achieved democratically but would have to be imposed by some kind of authoritarian state, which rather puts the lie to libertarians’ claim that under any other philosophy, busybodies who claim to know what’s best for other people impose their values on the rest of us. . . . Libertarians are also naïve about the range and perversity of human desires they propose to unleash. They can imagine nothing more threatening than a bit of Sunday-afternoon sadomasochism, followed by some recreational drug use and work on Monday. They assume that if people are given freedom, they will gravitate towards essentially bourgeois lives, but this takes for granted things like the deferral of gratification that were pounded into them as children without their being free to refuse. They forget that for much of the population, preaching maximum freedom merely results in drunkenness, drugs, failure to hold a job, and pregnancy out of wedlock. Society is dependent upon inculcated self-restraint if it is not to slide into barbarism, and libertarians attack this self-restraint. Ironically, this often results in internal restraints being replaced by the external restraints of police and prison, resulting in less freedom, not more. This contempt for self-restraint is emblematic of a deeper problem: libertarianism has a lot to say about freedom but little about learning to handle it. Freedom without judgment is dangerous at best, useless at worst. Yet libertarianism is philosophically incapable of evolving a theory of how to use freedom well because of its root dogma that all free choices are equal, which it cannot abandon except at the cost of admitting that there are other goods than freedom. Conservatives should know better.
Robert Locke
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours? During my second tour in Iraq, I was commander of SEAL Team Three, Task Unit Bruiser. We were deployed to the war-torn city of Ramadi, the epicenter of the insurgency at the time. Only a few weeks into the deployment, we conducted a large operation in conjunction with U.S. Army soldiers, U.S. Marines, and friendly Iraqi Army soldiers. There were multiple elements on the battlefield, all engaged in heavy enemy contact. In the fog of war, mistakes were made. Bad luck emerged. Things went wrong. There ended up being a vicious firefight between one of my SEAL elements and a friendly Iraqi unit. An Iraqi soldier was killed and several others were wounded, including one of my SEALs. It was a nightmare. While there was plenty of blame to go around, and plenty of people who had made mistakes, I realized there was only one person to blame: me. I was the commander. I was the senior man on the battlefield, and I was responsible for everything that happened. Everything. As a leader, there is no one else to blame. Don’t make excuses. If I don’t take ownership of problems, I can’t solve them. That’s what a leader has to do: take ownership of the problems, the mistakes, and the shortfalls, and take ownership of creating and implementing solutions to get those problems solved. Take ownership.
Timothy Ferriss (Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World)
As a country, as a people, have we changed? On the surface we might appear to have done so, but underneath I think we are still the same. Our change is measurable, but not significant. We remain bent on destroying ourselves. We still kill each other with alarming frequency and for foolish reasons, and we begin the killing at a younger age. We have much to celebrate, but we live in fear and doubt. We are pessimistic about our own lives and the lives of our children. We trust almost no one. “It is the same everywhere. We are a people under siege, walled away from each other and the world, trying to find a safe path through the debris of hate and rage that collects around us. We drive our cars as if they were weapons. We use our children and our friends as if their love and trust were expendable and meaningless. We think of ourselves first and others second. We lie and cheat and steal in little ways, thinking it unimportant, justifying it by telling ourselves that others do it, so it doesn’t matter if we do it, too. We have no patience with the mistakes of others. We have no empathy for their despair. We have no compassion for their misery. Those who roam the streets are not our concern; they are examples of failure and an embarrassment to us. It is best to ignore them. If they are homeless, it is their own fault. They give us nothing but trouble. If they die, at least they will provide us with more space to breathe.” His smile was bitter. “Our war continues, the war we fight with one another, the war we wage against ourselves. It has its champions, good and bad, and sometimes one or the other has the stronger hand. Our place in this war is often defined for us. It is defined for many because they are powerless to choose. They are homeless or destitute. They are a minority of sex or race or religion. They are poor or disenfranchised. They are abused or disabled, physically or mentally, and they have forgotten or never learned how to stand up for themselves.
Terry Brooks (A Knight of the Word (Word & Void, #2))
Where else in dramatic literature is there such a treatment of the life-and-death cycle of people and political change? One needs to reach back to the chronicles of Shakespeare, back to the Greeks. Larry Kramer isn't Sophocles and he isn't Shakespeare; we don't have Sophocleses or Shakespeares, not these days, but we do have, on rare occasion, remarkable accomplishment, and Kramer's is remarkable, invaluable, and rare. How else to dramatise revolution accurately, truthfully, politically, than by showing it to be tragic as well as triumphant? And on the other hand, if the medical, biological, political, and familial failures of "Destiny" produce, by the play's end, despair again; if we are plunged back into night, it cannot be different from the night with which "Normal Heart" began, rife with despair and terror, and pregnant with an offstage potential for transformation, for hope. Failure awaits any political movement, even a spectacularly successful movement such as the one Larry Kramer helped to spark and organise. Political movements, liberation movements, revolutions, are as subject to time, decline, mortality, tragedy, as any human enterprise, or any human being. Death waits for every living thing, no matter how vital or brilliant its accomplishment; death waits for people and for their best and worst efforts as well.politics is a living thing, and living things die. The mistake is to imagine otherwise, to believe that progress doesn't generate as many new problems as it generates blessings, to imagine, foolishly, that the struggle can be won decisively, finally, definitively. No matter what any struggle accomplishes, time, life, death bring in their changes, and new oppressions are always forming from the ashes of the old. The fight for justice, for a better world, for civil rights or access to medicine, is a never-ending fight, at least as far as we have to see. the full blooded description of this truth, the recognition and dramatisation of a political cycle of birth, death, rebirth, defeat, renewal - this is true tragedy, in which absolute loss and devastation, Nothing is arrived at, and from this Nothing, something new is born.
Tony Kushner (The Normal Heart & The Destiny of Me (two plays))
[...]Many of those friends were self-declared socialists - Wester socialists, that is. They spoke about Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Salvador Allende or Ernesto 'Che' Guevara as secular saints. It occurred to me that they were like my father in this aspect: the only revolutionaries they considered worthy of admiration had been murdered.[...]ut they did not think that my stories from the eighties were in any way significant to their political beliefs. Sometimes, my appropriating the label of socialist to describe both my experiences and their commitments was considered a dangerous provocation. [...] 'What you had was not really socialism.' they would say, barely concealing their irritation. My stories about socialism in Albania and references to all the other socialist countries against which our socialism had measured itself were, at best, tolerated as the embarrassing remarks of a foreigner still learning to integrate. The Soviet Union, China, the German Democratic Republic, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cuba; there was nothing socialist about them either. They were seen as the deserving losers of a historical battle that the real, authentic bearers of that title had yet to join. My friends' socialism was clear, bright and in the future. Mine was messy, bloody and of the past. And yet, the future that they sought, and that which socialist states had once embodied, found inspiration in the same books, the same critiques of society, the same historical characters. But to my surprise, they treated this as an unfortunate coincidence. Everything that went wrong on my side of the world could be explained by the cruelty of our leaders, or the uniquely backward nature of our institutions. They believed there was little for them to learn. There was no risk of repeating the same mistakes, no reason to ponder what had been achieved, and why it had been destroyed. Their socialism was characterized by the triumph of freedom and justice; mine by their failure. Their socialism would be brought about by the right people, with the right motives, under the right circumstances, with the right combination of theory and practice. There was only one thing to do about mine: forget it. [...]But if there was one lesson to take away from he history of my family, and of my country, it was that people never make history under circumstances they choose. It is easy to say, 'What you had was not the real thing', applying that to socialism or liberalism, to any complex hybrid of ideas and reality. It releases us from the burden of responsability. We are no longer complicit in moral tragedies create din the name of great ideas, and we don't have to reflect, apologize and learn.
Lea Ypi (Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History)
It is the purpose of both God and the devil to provide you with the answers to these key questions.  If Satan is able to establish his images of identity and destiny in your life, he then has set up a system of governing your life that more or less runs itself and requires very little maintenance or service on his part. It is an effective scheme of destruction in your life. I believe that it has always been God’s intention to impart, especially at specific junctures in life, His message of identity and destiny.  He has appointed special agents on this earth to ensure that His message of identity and destiny is revealed.  These agents are called PARENTS.  Their primary job is to make sure that children receive God’s message of identity and destiny throughout their growing-up years. Satan’s purpose is to access these very agents of God, the parents, and to impart his message of identity and destiny.  Many times parents are unwittingly used to impart the devil’s message rather than God’s. SATAN’S MESSAGE VS. GOD’S MESSAGE What type of message does the devil want to reveal regarding identity and destiny?  His message is something along these lines.  IDENTITY: “You are worthless.  You aren’t even supposed to be here.  You are a mistake.  Something is drastically wrong with you.  You are a ‘nobody.’” DESTINY: “You have no purpose.  You are a total failure.  You’ll never be a success.  You are inadequate.  You are not equipped to accomplish the job.  Nothing ever works out for you, etc..” I once heard a woman say, “It’s as if someone dropped me off on the planet forty some years ago, and I’ve been trying to make my way the best I could ever since.  But deep inside, I don’t feel as though I belong here, and I’ve been waiting for that someone to come back and pick me up.”  God never intended for anyone to feel that he doesn’t belong.  That is Satan’s message. God's message of identity and destiny is something like this:  IDENTITY:  “To Me you are very valuable and are worth the life of Jesus Christ.  You are a `somebody.’  You do belong here.  Before the foundation of the earth, I planned for you.  You were no mistake.” DESTINY:  “You are destined to a great purpose on this earth.  I placed you here for a purpose.  You are a success as a person and are completely adequate and suited to carry out My purpose.  Set your vision high, and allow Me to complete great accomplishments in your life.” JOE’S STORY Joe was a well dressed, successful business man in his late thirties when I first met him.  He had come to a weekend “FROM CURSE TO BLESSING” seminar.  As we moved into the small-group ministry time, Joe began to share, somewhat sheepishly, about the tremendous problem that anger had caused him in his life.  “Anger causes me to embarrass myself, and
Craig Hill (The Ancient Paths)
Our mistakes and misfortunes are more tolerable than the comments and criticism of our friends and family.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
There are a lot of platitudes that suggest age makes us wise, but the truth is it’s losing that teaches best. Making mistakes. Failing. Some people are wise enough to learn from the mistakes of others, but most need to experience failure first hand. You may need to lose something important before the lessons of life sink in.
Lindsay Buroker (Deadly Games (The Emperor's Edge, #3))
I came to see the streets and the schools as arms of the same beast. One enjoyed the official power of the state while the other enjoyed its implicit sanction. But fear and violence were the weaponry of both. Fail in the streets and the crews would catch you slipping and take your body. Fail in the schools and you would be suspended and sent back to those same streets, where they would take your body. And I began to see these two arms in relation—those who failed in the schools justified their destruction in the streets. The society could say, “He should have stayed in school,” and then wash its hands of him. It does not matter that the “intentions” of individual educators were noble. Forget about intentions. What any institution, or its agents, “intend” for you is secondary. Our world is physical. Learn to play defense—ignore the head and keep your eyes on the body. Very few Americans will directly proclaim that they are in favor of black people being left to the streets. But a very large number of Americans will do all they can to preserve the Dream. No one directly proclaimed that schools were designed to sanctify failure and destruction. But a great number of educators spoke of “personal responsibility” in a country authored and sustained by a criminal irresponsibility. The point of this language of “intention” and “personal responsibility” is broad exoneration. Mistakes were made. Bodies were broken. People were enslaved. We meant well. We tried our best. “Good intention” is a hall pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the Dream. An unceasing interrogation of the stories told to us by the schools now felt essential. It felt wrong not to ask why, and then to ask it again. I took these questions to my father, who very often refused to offer an answer, and instead referred me to more books. My mother and father were always pushing me away from secondhand answers—even the answers they themselves believed. I don’t know that I have ever found any satisfactory answers of my own. But every time I ask it, the question is refined. That is the best of what the old heads meant when they spoke of being “politically conscious”—as much a series of actions as a state of being, a constant questioning, questioning as ritual, questioning as exploration rather than the search for certainty. Some things were clear to me: The violence that undergirded the country, so flagrantly on display during Black History Month, and the intimate violence of “Yeah, nigger, what’s up now?” were not unrelated. And this violence was not magical, but was of a piece and by design. But what exactly was the design? And why? I must know. I must get out…but into what? I devoured the books because they were the rays of light peeking out from the doorframe, and perhaps past that door there was another world, one beyond the gripping fear that undergirded the Dream.
Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me (One World Essentials))
It seems that the best students in school tend to be the worst at learning from their mistakes because they have been conditioned to associate mistakes with failure instead of opportunity.
Ray Dalio (Principles Life and Work / The Leader Who Had No Title / I Will Teach You To Be Rich / Secrets of the Millionaire Mind)
What to do to be an Expert in Freelancing? What is Freelancing? We already know that, Now let's see What to do to be an Expert in Freelancing - Things to do for Self Development: Get positive feedback from clients by practicing what you are good at, and finding work that matches your skills. This is the key to your improvement and the first step to success. When you start to succeed, choose the opportunities that work best for you. Use the time appropriately and fully. Some of the processes of Self-Presentation after Self-Development are discussed below - Process of Introducing Yourself: 1. Enhance your profile and build your portfolio with accurate information about yourself. 2. Create your own signature that will identify you in your work. 3. Always use your own photo and signature for original work. 4. Run your own campaign. For example: commenting on others' posts, making full use of social sites, keeping in touch with others, doing service work, teaching others, participating in various seminars, and distributing leaflets or posters. Showing Professionalism: How to express or calculate that you are a professional? There are many ways, by which you can easily express that you are a professional entrepreneur or employee. The ways are: 1. Professionals never work for free, so before starting a job, you must be sure about the remuneration. 2. Professionals don't work on balance, if you want to show professionalism you must pay in cash or promise to pay half in advance and the rest at the end of the job. 3. A professional never lacks any research or communication for his work. Win the Client's Heart: There are thousands of freelancers in front of a client for a job, but only one gets the job. The person who got the job got it because he presented himself in the client's mind. Mistakes to Avoid: Only humans are fallible. It is natural for people to make mistakes, but if people can't learn from those mistakes then it is better not to make such mistakes. The Mistakes are: 1. Failure to identify oneself. 2. Show Engagement. 3. Lack of communication with the client etc. Being Punctual: It is wise to do the work on time. Never leave work. Because if you leave work, the amount of work will increase and not decrease. Therefore, it is better to do the work of time in time and move towards the formation of life by being respectful of time. So, if the above tasks are done or followed correctly, achieving success as a freelancer is just a saying. To make yourself a successful and efficient freelancer, the importance and importance of the above topics is immense.
Bhairab IT Zone
what matters is not education or money, but your persistence and the intensity of your desire to learn; that failures, mistakes, and conflicts are often the best education of all; and how true creativity and mastery emerge from all this.
Robert Greene (The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations)
We think our parents are in charge, right? Like they know what they’re doing? But the truth is, they’re making it up as they go along, just like we are. Just like everyone. If we judge them by their worst mistakes, they’re all, like, gargantuan failures. Maybe you should try judging your mom by her intentions, by whether she, like, loves you and is doing her best.” Dev
Marisa de los Santos (Belong to Me)
Before You Can Be Successful, You Need To Know What Failure Looks Like One of today’s best job search experts, Liz Ryan, described what failure looks like for a job seeker: The worst -- and most common -- interview mistake you can make is to be a forgettable applicant, and to leave the building without leaving any impression whatsoever on your interviewer. Managers are busy. They are overloaded with information the same way we all are. If you don't make your mark in your job interview, all traces of you will have left your manager's memory before you get home. Many job seekers believe they should just sit there, respond to a hiring manager’s questions and then ask one or two questions at the end. That is a recipe for failure.
Clark Finnical (Job Hunting Secrets: (from someone who's been there))
A different psychological process, but with a similar effect on our ability to learn from our mistakes, is simply to reinterpret our failures as successes. We persuade ourselves that what we did was not that bad; in fact, everything worked out for the best.
Tim Harford (Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure)
The Picard principle is the adage that “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” This principle denotes that even if you follow the best course of action available to you, you can sometimes still end up with a negative outcome, such as failure to achieve your goals. For instance you can submit a strong application for a job, and get rejected because the person who assessed the application already had a preferred candidate in mind. This principle helps you assess situations more rationally and cope with negative emotions, for instance when you would otherwise criticize yourself too harshly for a failure that wasn’t your fault. The risks of this principle are that it can lead you to avoid taking responsibility in cases where you should, and that it can cause feelings of frustration and helplessness.
Carson Anekeya
Failure? Yeah, I can deal with that. But not trying? Now, that’s something I can't live with! Falling flat on my face is all part of the adventure, but sitting on the sidelines? Hard pass. I’d rather dive in headfirst, make a few glorious mistakes, and learn something than sit around forever asking, “What if?” At least with failure, you can say you gave it your best shot. The only real failure is staying in the safe zone and not trying at all. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Life is Positive
too easy for you! Why don’t we try doing something more challenging that you can learn from?” The goal is not to make easily performed tasks the basis for our admiration. Focus on effort—and keep it genuine Be careful praising for failures or mistakes. Saying things like “Well done!” “You did your best!” “Better luck next time!” can be heard as pity. Focus on what they did accomplish and how it can be worked on—“I know you missed the goal, but it was very close! Let’s get out and practice next week so you’ll get it next time! Remember, practice is the key!” By focusing on the effort involved in learning, we create a growth mind-set. This mind-set is helpful in all aspects of life, from work to relationships. 9. Teach children not to compare themselves with others They need to realize themselves whether they did their best on a project or if they feel they can do more. Not everyone can be the best at everything, but you can be the best for yourself. This focus, as opposed to competing with others, fosters well-being. 10.
Jessica Joelle Alexander (The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know About Raising Confident, Capable Kids)
When avoiding failure is a primary focus, the work isn’t just more stressful; it’s a lot harder to do. And over the long run, that mental strain takes a toll, resulting in less innovation and the experience of burnout. Ironically, allowing for mistakes to happen can elevate the quality of our performance. It’s true even within roles that don’t require creativity.
Ron Friedman (The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace)
Let me leave you with one very recent example of Berry at his best, drawn from an op-ed piece that he published (with his old friend and collaborator Wes Jackson) shortly after the economy crashed in the fall of 2008. For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. This is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billions of dollars to the agribusiness corporations. I
Wendell Berry (Bringing it to the Table: Writings on Farming and Food)
We are all failures—at least, all the best of us are. —J. M. BARRIE W
John C. Maxwell (Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success)
Trusting others doesn’t mean that they won’t make mistakes. It means that if they do (or if you do), you trust they will act to help solve it. Fear can be created quickly; trust can’t. Leaders must demonstrate their trustworthiness, over time, through their actions—and the best way to do that is by responding well to failure.
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
Which leads to an interesting conclusion: When avoiding failure is a primary focus, the work isn’t just more stressful; it’s a lot harder to do. And over the long run, that mental strain takes a toll, resulting in less innovation and the experience of burnout. Ironically, allowing for mistakes to happen can elevate the quality of our performance. It’s true even within roles that don’t require creativity. And, as we’ll see in this next section, sometimes it can mean the difference between life and death. WHY
Ron Friedman (The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace)
When the consequences of reporting failure are too severe, employees avoid acknowledging mistakes altogether. But when a work environment feels psychologically safe and mistakes are viewed as a natural part of the learning process, employees are less prone to covering them up. The fascinating implication is that fearful teams avoid examining the causes of their blunders, making it all the more likely that their mistakes will be repeated again in the future.
Ron Friedman (The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace)
Having a team that’s afraid of admitting failure is a dangerous problem, particularly because the symptoms are not immediately visible. What appears on the surface to be a well-functioning unit may, in fact, be a group that’s too paralyzed to admit its own flaws. In contrast, teams that freely admit their errors are better able to learn from one another’s mistakes. They can also take steps to prevent repeating those mistakes by tweaking their process. Over the long term, encouraging employees to acknowledge mistakes is therefore a vital first step to seeing improvement.
Ron Friedman (The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace)
Bernard Law, the former cardinal of Boston, mistaking (or maybe understanding too well) the degree of authority bestowed on him by the signifier of his patronymic, denounced in 1996 proposed legislation giving health care benefits to same-sex partners of municipal employees. He did so by proclaiming, in a noteworthy instance of piety in the sky, that bestowing such access to health care would profoundly diminish the marital bond. "Society," he opined, "has a special interest in the protection, care and upbringing of children. Because marriage remains the principal, and the best, framework for the nurture, education and socialization of children, the state has a special interest in marriage." With this fatal embrace of a futurism so blindly committed to the figure of the Child that it will justify refusing health care benefits to the adults that some children become, Law lent his voice to the mortifying mantra of a communal jouissance that depends on the fetishization of the Child at the expense of whatever such fetishization must inescapably queer. Some seven years later, after Law had resigned for his failure to protect Catholic children from sexual assault by pedophile priests, Pope John Paul II returned to this theme, condemning state-recognized same-sex unions as parodic versions of authentic families, "based on individual egoism" rather than genuine love. Justifying that condemnation, he observed, "Such a 'caricature' has no future and cannot give future to any society." Queers must respond to the violent force of such constant provocations not only by insisting on our equal right to the social order's prerogatives, not only by avowing our capacity to promote that order's coherence and integrity, but also by saying explicitly what Law and the Pope and the whole of the Symbolic order for which they stand hear anyway in each and every expression or manifestation of queer sexuality: Fuck the social order and the Child in whose name we're collectively terrorized; fuck Annie; fuck the waif from Les Mis; fuck the poor, innocent kid on the Net; fuck Laws both with capital Ls and with small; fuck the whole network of Symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop.
Lee Edelman (No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive)
It seems to me that the best students in school tend to be the worst at learning from their mistakes, because they have been conditioned to associate mistakes with failure instead of opportunity. This is a major impediment to their progress.
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
A failure is not always a mistake. It may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
B.F. Skinner
Failure was the fire in the crucible of greatness. Every time a woman made a mistake, she should just think back, examine it, and figure out how to avoid making that mistake again. Shay wanted to believe that, but her heart wouldn’t let her. No. Mistakes burned in her soul, reminders of her failure and the fact that she wasn’t the best in the world at something.
Martha Carr (Kill the Willing / Bury the Past But Shoot It First / Reload Faster / Dead In Plain Sight / Tomb Raiding PhD / Tomb Raider Emeritus (I Fear No Evil #1-6))
It takes a special person to take failure on the chin, check their ego at the door, and to learn from their mistakes. But oftentimes that is what's required to be successful.
Nick Shaw (Fit For Success - Lessons on Achievement and Leading Your Best Life)
THE BEST WAY TO ACCEPT YOUR PLEASURE IS TO ACCEPT YOUR PAIN; THE BEST WAY TO ACCEPT YOUR PAIN IS TO ACCEPT YOUR SUFFERINGS; THE BEST WAY TO ACCEPT YOUR SUFFERINGS IS TO ACCEPT YOUR STRUGGLES; THE BEST WAY TO ACCEPT YOUR STRUGGLES IS TO ACCEPT YOUR FAILURES; THE BEST WAY TO ACCEPT YOUR FAILURES IS TO ACCEPT YOUR MISTAKES; THE BEST WAY TO ACCEPT YOUR MISTAKES IS TO ACCEPT YOURSELF; THE BEST WAY TO ACCEPT GOD IS TO ACCEPT YOU IN OTHERS AND TO ACCEPT OTHERS IN YOU
P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar
WAS THIS THEN THE CONCLUSION of all things—that there was nothing so perfect that it was worth a man’s while to struggle for it; that any officious interference with the recognised and existing was a mistake; that nothing was either the best or the worst, but all things mere degrees in a round of the comparative, in which a little more or a little less was of no importance, and the most strenuous efforts tended to failure as much as indifference?
Mrs. Oliphant (The Margaret Oliphant Collection)
Maturity, growth and experience .It is always found at the place where you are allowed to make mistakes. Where you are allowed to try your best without fearing to fail.
D.J. Kyos
The road to success is paved with mistakes. * * * You don't have to be perfect to be your best. * * * Sometimes, failing your way to fabulous is the path to success. * * * "Turn failure into your friend!
Rosie J. Pova (The School of Failure: A Story about Success)
Brilliant solutions don't occur spontaneously, especially for the kind of complex problem we saw at Google. They come from working through ideas, options, alternatives, even failures and mistakes, and combining them in new ways to find the best solution
Linda A. Hill (Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation)