
Failure is
something
we can avoid
only by
saying
nothing,
doing
nothing,
and
being
nothing.
— Dennis Waitley
Reclaiming failure is about owning failure – making failure work for us instead of being something to fear or avoid. By understanding how failure works, and talking through tactics for changing our relationship with failure, we can learn faster, grow more, and achieve things we might not have even attempted before.
Failure is
something
we can avoid
only by
saying
nothing,
doing
nothing,
and
being
nothing.
— Dennis Waitley
The greatest reward for a man’s failure is not necessarily the consequent success, but what he becomes by it.
— Ogwo David Emenike
You’ll come to see that a man learns nothing from winning. The act of losing, however, can elicit great wisdom – not least of which is how much more enjoyable it is to win. It’s inevitable to lose now and again. The trick is, not to make a habit of it.
– Uncle Henry, A Good Year
This quote comes from one of my favorite sappy movies, A Good Year. It comes at the end of a tennis match in which the main character, Max, loses to his Uncle Henry. Henry, whose own path suggests Max’s own future in the plot, imparts a bit of wisdom on the young boy.
Here is a link to the clip, if you’d like to watch it.
I like everything about the clip, except perhaps the bit about not making a habit of losing. I absolutely think we should make a habit of losing – or more specifically, failing. But in doing so, we should develop our skills in failing in a way that propels us in the direction we want to go.