Success and Failure

One must:

1. Care; to have the energy to:
2.    Try; which should ALWAYS cause one to:
3.       Fail; from which one gains:
4.          Experience; which will allow one to reliably:
5.             Succeed

Thinking that one can skip step 3 is a common error. Experience comes primarily from Failure and Success without experience is luck and luck is not repeatable

Good judgment comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

Failure and success visit - experience and wisdom abide.

"Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free." -- Tim Robbins, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues"

Blame others and forfeit the opportunity to grow.

"Most people are born and years later die without really having lived at all. They play it safe and tiptoe through life with no aspiration other than to arrive at death safely." -- Tony Campolo, "Carpe Diem"

"Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit". -- W. Somerset Maugham

Truth comes out of error more easily than out of confusion. -- Francis Bacon

Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise. --Cato the Elder (234 BC - 149 BC), from Plutarch, Lives

Remember "Stuart" says:

• Most problems are small, we can solve them, or they will pass. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
• Most of the time, our lives are very good. The vast majority of our time is pleasant or could be.
• We are doing a good job, and have solved far more problems than we have caused.
• We have learned from each error and will only do better.

Experience

• is something you don't get until just after you need it.
• is what you get when you don't get what you want.
• is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.
• is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again. -- F. P. Jones
• is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and the instruction afterward.
• varies directly with equipment ruined.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this." -- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads

Success...

• At age 3, success is not peeing in your pants.
• At age 16, success is "gettin' a little".
• At age 25, success is graduation and a wedding.
• At age 35, success is about career and family.
• At age 55, success is about graduations and weddings.
• At age 70, success is "gettin' a little".
• At age 90, success is not peeing in your pants.

When I look at my troubles as necessary experiences, I experience less negativity. (Thanks Cliff!)

Stories

• Crackpots

"I was just too dumb to know I couldn't do it" - James C Newton +