it's okay to make mistakes...

Lately I've noticed that my daughter won't try something new unless she knows the outcome will be in her favor, she likes positive results and needs to have control of the situation. She is afraid of failure and will say it's too hard before she even gives it a try.  I've been encouraging her to get out there and try  new things, even if it seems too hard. The best things in life often require lots of hard work and many, many failures.  A couple of good examples that come to mind is Thomas Edison (it is said that it took him thousands of attempts at inventing the light bulb before he got it right) and Walt Disney (did you know he was fired by a newspaper editor because he "lacked imagination and had no good ideas." He also started several business that didn't last very long and ended in bankruptcy. He didn't stop trying and eventually found huge success!

J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, spoke to the graduating class of Harvard in June 2008.  Her commencement speech wasn't about success it was about failures.  She shared some of her failures in life and the following quote stuck with me:

“You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default."  - J.K. Rowling

While my four and a half year old daughter is too young to read J.K. Rowling's speech and understand what it means, we can watch the Disney movie Meet the Robinsons together.  Loosely based on the book, A Day With Wilbur Robinson by William Joyce, the movie is about an orphaned boy named Lewis who aspires to be an inventor. Unfortunately his inventions tend to scare off potential parents.  While longing for a family of his own, Lewis has grown saddened over the years as all his attempts to be adopted seem to have failed.  The ending is great and the movie immediately became one of my favorite Disney films.  It has a great motto throughout the film - Keep moving forward!!

"From failure we learn, from success not so much" says Lewis in Meet the Robinsons

At the end of the movie they leave you with a quote from Walt Disney:

 "Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - Walt Disney

With that said, you have only failed if you learned nothing from the attempt.  I will continue to encourage my children to take chances and remind them that it is okay to make mistakes.  The only way to get better at something is through trial and error - analyze the original outcome, make a change and then try again.  It's a process... life is a process... and if you really want to live we must make mistakes and encounter failure.