Fail your way to success

From the time we are children we are taught to believe that failure is a negative. Perfect papers are rewarded with a gold star and colorful stickers. Those that fall below a certain level are marked with a red F. Attached to this are judgments including, "You didn't try hard enough," "You're lazy," "You're stupid," "You'll never amount to anything." They hardly encourage one to pursue the tasks surrounding the so-called failure. So the natural inclination is to give up and create self-talk that says, "I'll never be good at that. Why bother?" Instead our approach to failure should be one of celebration. "On this attempt it didn't work out the way I wanted. What do I need to do to get closer to reaching my goal?" What if Thomas Edison had given up the first time he worked on what would eventually become the light bulb or if Walt Disney accepted the first rejection of his plan to build Disneyland? There are countless stories, including your own, of how persistence led to success. What did you learn from the last time you had what others considered a failure?