Failmore

“When my brother and I were growing up, my father would encourage us to fail. We’d sit around the dinner table and he’d ask, “What did you guys fail at this week?” If we had nothing to tell him, he’d be disappointed. The logic seems counterintuitive, but it worked beautifully. He knew that many people become paralyzed by the fear of failure. They’re constantly afraid of what others will think if they don’t do a great job and, as a result, take no risks. My father wanted us to try everything and feel free to push the envelope. His attitude taught me to define failure as not trying something I want to do instead of not achieving the right outcome.” -Entrepreneur Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, on failure

“Fall down seven times, stand up eight.” -Japanese Proverb

“All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” -Samuel Beckett

It’s not that you’re not good enough or talented enough.

It’s that you haven’t failed enough.

I’m talking about true failure.

The kind in which you know what you want (hard to do, often takes inner work and experimentation to really figure out), go after it with everything you got, put yourself out there, fail, pick yourself up, ask yourself what you learned from the experience, and then do it all over again. Believing in yourself the entire time.

How many of those failures have you had?

If few or none, you need to fail more. And if it helps to take away some of the sting of the word failure, let’s coin a new word…failmore.

Say it with me…”Failmore.”

Once more with feeling…”Failmore!”

Now you’re cooking.