Why is it that we are so scared to fail?
Why do we want to protect our children from failure so much that we will go to great extents to stop them from experiencing this natural part of human growth?
Not long ago, my 14-year-old announced that he wasn’t going to do a school project. He didn’t like the assignment. He said it goes against his moral beliefs.
The mother in me was horrified. My child was intentionally setting out to FAIL and that was simply something I could not accept.
So I did what mothers throughout the ages have always done. I meddled. I interfered. I coaxed. I cajoled.
We argued. Nicely at first. Not so nicely later on.
I yelled. He yelled. I talked to his teacher. I threatened dire consequences of what would happen if he did not do this project. He stood firm and fast. He was not going to do it.
The days marched on. The due date nudged closer and closer.
I capitulated and did something I am not terribly proud of. I bribed him to do his project.
The bribe got his attention. He did the project.
Well, sort of.
He did it because he wanted the carrot I was offering and not because he really wanted to do the project. He had no interest in the project itself, only in what I was offering. He did not do a good job on the project. He did not learn anything by doing the project.
Soon after this incident occurred I spoke to an education administrator whom I greatly admire and told him about what had just transpired.
His question to me was why didn’t I just let him fail?
Why didn’t I let my son fail? Why?
I couldn’t watch my child fail when I knew he had the wherewithal to succeed, that’s why. I listened to my friend’s feedback and realized at that moment I had been wrong to interfere.
“What’s the worst thing that would happen if he didn’t do the project?” my friend asked.
“He’d fail,” I answered.
“And?”
“He might have to go to summer school.”
“Would that be the end of the world?”
No, going to summer school and learning through the school of hard knocks that your parents aren’t always there to hold your hand and fix everything wouldn’t be the end of the world. Failing can be good. We can learn from our failures.
I recalled something a friend said to me not long after my husband and I divorced. I ran into an old friend at a grocery store and blurted out something about a failed marriage. He said: “I had a marriage too that didn’t work out but I don’t think of it as a failed marriage. I look at it as a practice marriage. It got me ready for the marriage I have now.”
Look at inventor Thomas Edison. There’s this story that goes around that says Thomas Edison failed more than 1,000 times when trying to create the light bulb. When asked about it Edison said: “I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways not to make a light bulb.”
The whole idea here is that even if you try and fail, it doesn’t mean that you didn’t learn something. How else do we learn? We aren’t born with all the answers.
Where would we be if failure was not part of the normal human experience? We’d be stuck on first base. Scared to try something new. Scared to abandon something we don’t like, something that doesn’t speak to us, something that is not in keeping with who we are and what we want.
At the age of 22, Oprah Winfrey she was fired from her first reporting job. Do you think that Oprah is a failure? I don’t. I think she is one of the most accomplished women alive today.
When we fail we learn what works and what doesn’t. We learn about processes, elimination and about ourselves. Failure breeds success and if your children don’t learn to fail as children they won’t be comfortable with taking risks as adults because they’ll be crippled by the fear of failure.
Great post. I too have recently come to realize how important failing is for our growth. Funny how we avoid something that is so full of tremendous opportunity. I’m also surprised that people seem to avoid the topic as though they were saving themselves from it! I too just finished a similar post on my blog http://smartliving365.com check it out if you get a chance…. Kathy