Are you caught in the struggle between perfection, failure, and inspiration? Failure, in particular, is something most of us avoid. Perhaps we shouldn’t.
Interesting speech, yes? Now, no one is encouraging you to go out and deliberately fail. What Ms. Rowling suggests is that we shouldn’t be so afraid of failure that we don’t take risks.
If Ms. Rowling’s speech hasn’t convinced you that failure can be a good thing, that failure is part of life, read KM Huber’s blog, The Way to Fall Apart. It’s a lovely post and reminds us all that falling apart is necessary for things to come together.
But failing and falling apart are scary. So we look for some way to make it come together. Aren’t we all guilty of sometimes avoiding the possibility of failure by trying to make everything perfect? And wouldn’t you know it, Seth Godin had something to say about Polishing Perfect.
Has this post made you uncomfortable? Talking about, thinking about, much less experiencing failure is uncomfortable. But remind yourself, failure is just one way that didn’t work. Dare to risk failure. You never know what you might discover.
I’m risking failure with an epic rewrite of an imperfect novel that I can’t let go.
Still afraid of failure? You may want to read The Perfect Trap.