Month: February 2026

LEARN TO FAIL PROPERLY

How many times do you have to try something before learning it? Two times? Three times? Thomas Edison failed more than 1000 times before inventing the electric light bulb. Can you imagine sticking with something that long? I am not sure that I would. The point of all of this is that the amount of times that you do not succeed at something in life will always outnumber the times that you do succeed. In other words, you will fail a lot more than you succeed. Knowing this, you would think that failure would be a well-studied subject. On the contrary. Most people do not like to think about failure, much less study it.

If failure is something we are going to experience often in our life, should we not spend some time learning how to do it properly? Many of you might be asking how can you ‘fail properly’? Don’t you just fail or succeed? The average person does, yes. If we are looking to create an amazing life, it involves learning to put everything that occurs in our life to work for us. This includes failure. How can we do that? The first step is changing our mindset around failure. We must see it for what it is – a learning experience. Your muscles do not grow in the gym without encountering resistance. The same is true for you as a person. You only grow when you encounter resistance. In fact, the bigger the resistance, the bigger you must grow to overcome it. Just as the heavier weight in the gym requires more muscle growth. The photo above may seem cliche, but it is 100% true. Failure is a ‘first attempt at learning’. You do not learn much if you succeed at things the first time. It also would lead to a boring life eventually.

The second step to making failure work for us is learning to mine it. Yes, it is time to imagine ourselves as miners and see what we can get out of failure. The obvious may be the lessons and knowledge. If you have ever tried to put out a grease fire with water, you will soon learn, in spectacular fashion, that is the exact opposite thing you should do. It is a failure in the moment, but you will never put water on a grease fire again. You gained that knowledge. How about trusting someone with a secret only to discover they told everyone they know? Failed in that judge of character, but learned they cannot be trusted with confidential information. In addition, if there is something you want to get out, perhaps this was the person to tell. In each case you walked away with more knowledge than you went in with.

Another thing we gain from failure is resilience. If we always succeeded, how tough would we be when faced with a challenge? Not very. Failure teaches us perseverance, patience, and mental and emotional fortitude. These are lessons that you cannot learn with success. Therefore, failure is actually something we can be grateful for. It gives us a kind of strength that success never could. You owe it to yourself to learn how to fail properly. We are all going to do it in life. We should learn to do it in a way that will give us an amazing life!

STOP AND THINK

Here is a post that should not have to be written, but must be read. There are so many out there jumping to conclusions and often doing so without compassion or understanding. Think of the picture above. We may see a man who appears to be emotional, sad or moved to tears. Many would think he was ‘not manly’ or worse make fun of him. They would not ask why he is in such an emotional state or even ponder to consider what may make him so vulnerable in public.

Parents, you may think it is no big deal that your child is a bully. Not only can that lead to some deplorable adults, but think of the photo above. The child being attacked and bullied at school could be the very one being abused at home. When will this become too much for the child to take? None of us know. What would be tragic is if actions taken by another child would push them over the edge and lead to that child taking their own lives. Not only would that result in the loss of one life, but the guilt the other child would be forced to live with would be a second tragedy. Teach your children to live and treat others with kindness and compassion.

Here is another one that can break your heart. Many of the elderly are ignored or looked down upon for one reason or another. They should be treasured. It is them who have paved the way for all of us. Think of the example sighted above. People may look at an old man who has scars on him, or other physical, or even mental, ailments. How many of us stop and think that he could have received them fighting for our country? He could have been burned trying to save a family from a fire. We never know the story behind the people we see. None of us would like to be judged without understanding or compassion. We should afford the same rights to others.

Going forward, let us all make a conscious effort to understand others. Let us treat them with the love and compassion we so strongly crave in our own lives. We impact the lives of all of those we come in contact with to one degree or another. Let us do our best to make sure it is in a positive way.