In lieu of resolving to exercise, learn a new skill, or travel somewhere exotic my New Year's Resolution is simple: I want to fail, more.
I know that on the surface that sounds ridiculous. But let's unpack it for a second. Some of the most successful people talked a lot about their willingness to fail. And fail often.
Edison said he wasn't failing with his first 10,000 attempts at creating a light bulb...he was just learning what didn't work. Brilliant.
Or consider these...
"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
"You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.” - Walt E. Disney
"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." - Michael Jordan
"Every strike brings me closer to the next home run." - Babe Ruth
Why do so many famous people talk a great deal about failure? Simple, their willingness to fail is directly tied to their ability to succeed.
So the logic goes: the more risks you take, the more often you fail. And the more often you fail, the greater chance you have to succeed.
Over the next year I am hoping to increase my failures significantly. In doing so, I hope to achieve great things. Now, I just need to figure out what I want to fail at first.
Any ideas?
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3 comments:
I was with you until the Babe Ruth quote. Every strike is NOT closer to a home run ... it's closer to an out. You don't need any strikes to hit a homer.
I'll just stick to loosing weight. ;0)
I think a good start to your resolution would be tracking other people failures (you know, to get good at it properly) at the FAIL blog: http://failblog.org/
Now on to exercising and losing weight for me! ;-)
It seems like losing weight is a common theme amongst my readers. I certainly wasn't implying that's a bad thing. Best of luck to both of you!
And Lee, thanks for the heads up on that blog. Adding to my reader now.
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