Don’t associate failing with quitting

My four-year old son scampers thought the house, zinging and zagging like a professional running back going for the greatest run in NFL history. His brother, one and a half years old follows, but fails to be as nimble as his older brother.  The younger one is more like a drunken sailor who’s mastered navigating road obstacles from a crash car dummy.  With every crash, he gets back up and does his best Peyton Manning impression, rubs some dirt into the wound and walks it off.  Sometimes his ego is bruised and needs reinsurance from mom and dad, but he’s right back at it minutes later.

Each failure to keep up with his brother was a learning opportunity on how to improve. He realized that you don’t need to run through three rooms to get to the front door, just make a right at the kitchen and you’re there. Failure to keep up with his brother has taught him to learn how to achieve the same goals, just quicker.

The ability to learn from our mistakes makes humans successful.  So the next time you fail at achieving something look closely at what caused it and learn how to avoid or navigate around these problems. Use this new knowledge to get you to your goal.  We all don’t follow the same path in life, but at the end we all get there with each failure.