Freedom to Fail

Throughout conversations with others lately, the words “freedom to fail” frequently come up.  It seems that many people are too afraid to make mistakes and as a result they stay in the safe zone.  For example, when trying to achieve excellence in a certain area, mistakes will happen along the way.  However, I know many individuals who only put in a minimal effort so no mistakes are made. My friend Adam shares an account of this situation.

His discouragement confronted him stronger than before. The cards seemed stacked against him. He was faced with an important decision.

He sat alone in his bedroom with his notepad. It contained his accomplishments, dreams, and hopes. He made it a practice to write down and chronicle the progress of his thoughts and goals. It contained reflections, advice from friends, and quotes. He flipped through the pages. He noticed that long ago he had written “Be encouraged by failure.”

Be encouraged by failure?

He thought about what this meant and remembered what a close friend once told him. “When you first learn to walk as a child you wobble and fall. When you fall did you give up because it was too hard and say ‘I guess I will never walk?’ No, you got up again and kept trying. You slowly learned and as you did you gained more freedom.”

He realized that failure is often an essential ingredient to success.

He wrote in his notepad “instead of allowing failure and the fear of failure to discourage me, I will use failure as a catalyst for pursuing my dream.”

(c) Arianna’s Random Thoughts