Failure – in the conventional sense – is not an attractive word. It’s the kind of event – whether it’s getting turned down for a date or the demise of a multi-million-dollar company – that we never wish for. Indeed, what precipitates failure is the optimistic progression towards what we hope will be success. No one, in the particular sense, hopes for failure.

In the general sense, however, failure is actually not such a bad thing – it will, in fact, teach you way more than success. For example, in high school English, my teacher took one look at my name at the top of my paper and assigned me exactly the same grade almost every time. I was 85%. But in university, I learned that I was only 50%. But I didn’t want to be a 50% student forever – in English, anyways – so I learned that I had to learn, to listen, to try, to fail if I was going to succeed.

It’s not a lesson that’s easy for a semi-perfectionist – my husband reminds me that I fail at little, but mostly because I risk little, but I resist hearing the message from him, as we often do from our nearest and dearest.

I just finished another book by Neil Pasricha – You Are Awesome – and it’s all about resilience. Pasricha’s style resonates with me but the chapter Lose More to Win More really hit me. (Don’t tell my husband.) At the end of the chapter, he writes: “Admitting failure is hard. But you can do it! Trumpet them! Be proud of them. Because you learned from them and they were fumbles on the path that got you here. You wouldn’t be here without there. And you can’t get there without here.”

So this is me trumpeting my failures, of which this is by no means an exhaustive list:

1. In Grade Two, I peed my pants in school. For years, I felt such humiliation – and failure – about this incident. It helped once I realized that I was not alone in this experience and it gave me empathy for pants-wetters everywhere. When a co-worker had an accident when we were both in our twenties, I covered for her as she slunk home and then never mentioned it again. I was the only one she invited to her wedding.
2. The story of me trying to do better in my university English class? That didn’t hold true for Intro Physics – a course I enrolled in and dropped – twice. I had no desire to get better and it helped me recognize that pursuing a degree in the Sciences was totally wrong for me. And I can enjoy learning about Einstein without a full appreciation of E=mc².
3. When I was 21, I saw my car’s dashboard light up with “check engine” when I was two hours away from my destination. I ignored it. I will NEVER do that again. R.I.P. Chevy Nova.
4. I failed to visit a dear friend in the hospital when he was dying of cancer and I deeply regret it now. I hope I never make that mistake again.
5. I have barely read any classic novels. I have yet to add any Dickens, Dostoyevsky or Doyle to my list. But I have learned that while actually reading the classics is kinda boring – especially if I already know all the plot points – listening to one on audiobook is a painless way of increasing my literary street cred.
6. When our boys were little and I was first starting to write publicly, my hubby and I created a family newsletter – the kind you needed people to subscribe to and pay real dollars for and that we would send in the mail in a manilla envelope. How quaint! We did four issues, had even less paid subscribers and I thought the whole thing was a silly mistake. I was reminded of it in Pasricha’s book when he recounted how many years and blogs he went through before his 1000 Awesome Things landed. I no longer see that as a failure but as a stepping stone. Plus, the kids had watermarked scrap paper to draw on for years after that.
7. I have started more days with the effort to “eat perfectly” than not and most of those days have ended up in perfectionistic failure. I have tried programs, paid for classes, bought fitness equipment and I’m still unhappy with the size of my pants. But: I’ve learned that working out – especially on a regular basis – and eating lots of vegetables and not so much artificial food, FOR REALS makes me feel sooooooo much better. Maybe someday the message will get to my heart. Both the metaphorical one and the beating one.
8. I haven’t written as much as I should have. I haven’t risked, haven’t prioritized, haven’t queried enough in my writing career. To my own detriment. Because if I don’t fail, I won’t learn. And if I don’t learn, I won’t get better. Which is what I want to do. *Sigh.* But for some reason, this blog gets written every week – somewhat mysteriously. Not like elves who helped the cobbler, but like I don’t know yet what makes me write this every week and not work on my other projects.

The real success, it would seem, is in failing better and dwelling just long enough on it to learn the lesson behind it.