Getting “more comfortable” with failure

Fail.  

Just writing that word gives me the willies so you can imagine what “They need to get more comfortable with failure” does to my nervous system.  I overheard this “get more comfortable with failure” while the day wound to a close in the Adventures in Missions offices.  Failure…okay?  Crikey, that’s just unAmerican!

The person who said this is a dreamer.  He encourages others to risk to dream and then act on the dreams God nurtures inside.  Get a plan and all that, but move on with what’s in your heart before it withers and the opportunity is either lost or moves to the next schlep with an idea or pulse.

Remember, “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?”  I’m wondering if it really should read, “What would you willingly attempt even if failure was likely?”  Not nearly as poetic, but more of a challenge.

In your good life, what is so worth doing, that failing is part of the risk you readily take?  Is it college?  The World Race?  New friendships?  Buying or selling a house?  Falling in love?  Running a marathon (go Rhonda & Dave!)?  Starting a business or a family?  We all want guarantees and nobody (except for those Jackass guys) wants to end up as the new YouTube snicker-sensation. 

I’m beginning to think that my friend is right about our need to get more comfortable with failure. You’ve heard all about Edison & Einstein and their impressive list of “failures”.  You don’t need a tired pep talk. Instead, you and I need permission-permission to fail and fail hard.  We need to get comfortable in the efforts and the risk of a faceplant-in-the-middle-of-the-prom fail.  We need permission to fail so that we ACTIVATE our freedom to TRY.  

I am a big weenie.  Trust me on this.  I’m so worried about screwing up that I too often DO NOT ACT.

Did God ever say that we must develop perfectly executable plans that go off without a hitch ON THE FIRST TRY?  (No, he did not.)

Than why do we expect perfection in ourselves and one another?  Life is rich in failure. Failure is something we are really good at – hardwired for – so it is time to get comfortable with it.  The trick is to get comfortable WITH it and not IN it (see illustration at left).  

My friend, Maren, once told me that when she skis the really tough slopes, she takes her heart out, tosses it down the hill, and chases after it.   We must find a way to toss our hearts into life and living, and chase after these God-given dreams.  Let’s not grow so safe from failure that we devolve into moldy old bores. We can recast “mucking up” from failure to bodacious beginning? 

I wonder.  What good thing is obscured in our lives by fear of failure?

Emil Zatopek (see image above at right) is a guy worth getting to know.  Learning more about his life helped me get perspective at a time when failure felt like a life sentence.