Failure

I saw a young woman on TV the other night who is a new billionaire.  She is the creator of Spanx and was being interviewed about her success.  She said when she was younger that her father asked her and her brother every night at the dinner table what they had failed at that day.  She said she would describe to him how hard she had tried at something but had not been successful.  His response to her was that you didn't fail unless you neglected to do your best, so they would high-five on how hard she tried.  She and her brother came to realize that failure is not whether you succeed or not but failure is not doing your best.

In her family they came to realize that failure is a gift because you can't fail if you don't try.  Every time they tried they came closer to success and that lead to her success in life.  This woman's story really impressed me.  I became aware of how many times I have been afraid to try something for fear of failure and yet for this woman the failure was motivation.  What a wonderful gift her father gave her.   By removing the fear of failure he allowed her to experience all the necessary challenges as steps toward her goal.  He reframed her reality from fear to possibility.  How cool is that?????