Failure: The Importance of Teaching our Kids how to Fail
These are not fun lessons to learn but they are critical and powerful.
Did I ever tell you about how my advisor accidentally knocked my dissertation in the trash after my defense? After you defend your dissertation, you meet with your advisor to get all the updates that are needed for your final submission. I had major revisions and was feeling completely overwhelmed.
As we are walking into his office, he rested all the papers on a trashcan. Oooops…in they fell.
It took all my strength to not crumble right there an then. Instead I took a deep break, picked the papers up myself and walked into his office. Sat down and listened to list of all the mistakes I made.
My dissertation was on parent-teacher relationships and I had never worked so hard it my life. Yet here I sat and my advisor was tearing it apart. It felt like failure.
I went home and crawled into bed for 3 days. Then said, enough is enough! I needed to make the corrections and take the next step. That is exactly what I did. I graduated 6 weeks later as Dr. Marcie.
Can you image what would have happened if I let that failure overcome me? Nope, me neither!
It is because I had learned to face failure and learn lessons that I took the next step. Make sure you teach your kids how to fail, so when they face challenges, they get up and take the next step!
Failure is a critical life skills, even though it is not always a fun skill to learn. Children need to be taught how to be loss and how to fail. They also need to be taught what to do next. We live in a time when everyone want to win, when everyone gets a trophy.
