Yes, you heard me right. I expect you to fail in life.
I guess that is not a statement that you’d expect a mother to say to her children. It is true though and I’ll explain why.
If you always succeed it means that you are not pushing the boundaries of what you are capable of. It means that you are playing it safe, staying in your comfort zone. That is not the best way to grow.
I remember a time where M came home and was a bit worried. She told me that she was getting one or two sums wrong in Maths. When I said I was pleased about that I can remember the confusion on your face M. I explained that if you got every sum right in every lesson that the teacher was probably pitching the work wrong and that you weren’t learning as quickly as you should. That seemed to make you feel better.
You see, mistakes are our best teachers and so I expect you to make some sometimes. You will learn far more quickly – and you will also learn to deal with failure which is an important lesson in itself.
Pick just one person who has changed the world in a way that inspires you and then do a little research about them. I can pretty much guarantee that they will not only have made mistakes but will have made huge ones. The thing that sets them apart is that they will have learnt from them, bounced back from them and turned them into a success. That is called resilience and I’ll write about that in a separate post some time.
Of course this all comes with a health warning. You should always try not be a failure and give it your best shot. You should always try to think what might go wrong and put things in place to avoid it. But if you do those things and you fail anyway, it isn’t the end of the world. Far from it, it might be the beginning of learning a really valuable lesson.
So go ahead and make some mistakes. You have my full support.
