Here's something I don't do well...

I don't fail well.  I don't like to fail (does anybody??).  I don't like to acknowledge failure to myself.  I am not comfortable with it.

I have friends that can say they have failed -- it doesn't mean they are done -- it means what they have tried hasn't worked yet.  I can live with "just haven't been successful yet"  but the word failure gets to me.  And it shouldn't, right?  Aren't I the one who's always preaching "no judgment"?  Yeah, so I need to accept I am a work in progress too.

Leo at Zen Habits said something interesting today.  The subject of his post was change and how we seem to love it and hate it all at the same time.  He did a wonderful job of listing some of the transitions he has made in the last year and some of the elements of change (inertia, beating the resistance of others, finding the joy, keeping the joy...) but it was the last one that gave me pause.

FAILURE.

He says:

One last note, to anyone making changes: you will fail. I don’t say that to discourage you, but to release you from the fear of failure … because if you already know it will happen, then there’s no pressure to avoid it. Failure is an inevitable part of change, and in fact it should be celebrated — without failure, we’d learn nothing.

Without failure we would learn nothing.  And there it is -- the reason for failure  --  to learn.  And if I need to learn something (and I do love learning1) then I need to accept failure as a sign of progress.  If I am failing, it means I am trying something new (not succeeding...yet...but at least I am not sticking with the status quo)

Failure and I need to make peace -- or more to the point, I need to make peace with failure because it is inevitable. 

What would you choose to try if there was no pressure to avoid failing???  Wouldn't that shut Lizzie up?