What Do You Love Enough That You Are Willing To Fail At?

“Practice makes perfect”

“Failure is not the opposite of success – it is part of success”

Pick your favorite quote about success, and chances are there is some aspect of it that involves failure, overtly stated or not. I find these quotes to be helpful reminders that we can expect to fail as we grow, but knowing that intellectually, vs really embracing it, are sometimes two different things.

I heard a quote recently that completely changed how I think about failure in the context of learning a new skill:

Do you love doing it enough that you are willing to fail over and over again?

This was a bit of a revelation to me because, once I started thinking about it, the things I am good at today are things that I failed at, a lot, in my past. Yet, there was something I got from learning that skill that kept me motivated, even though I wasn’t always successful at it. Contrasting that with things I wanted to learn, but ultimately gave up on, and I realized I was drawn to the end goal of being proficient, but the process of gaining proficiency was not something I enjoyed enough.

I think this is especially true as an adult. It’s easy to forget how much time and effort was spent on gaining proficiency in the skills we currently have that provide us with a career and stable paycheck. Yet, when we go to learn something new and start running into difficulty, we make excuses by saying things like ‘oh, I was never good at foreign languages’ or ‘I was never that athletic anyway’.

Thinking about learning a new skill in the context of having to love it enough to be willing to fail over and over again does two big things that I think are important. First, it gives me the permission to give up if, in being honest with myself, I find that I was mostly drawn to the end result. Second, if I do take on learning something new, it helps me focus on determining what the rewarding aspect is that will help keep me motivated throughout the process of failing, until a rewarding level of proficiency is achieved, and a flywheel effect of satisfaction has had a chance to take hold.