Learning to Fail Well: The First Step Building a Culture of Effort, Belief (Hope) and Grit in Seaford
All of us fail, when we first learn a challenging activity. The secret of success seems to be to fail well. Failing well means that you do not give up after a setback, but rededicate yourself to succeeding. Failing well means that you overcome early disappointments and keep at it, no matter how far the goal seems. It involves effort, coaching and being open to constructive criticism. Mostly, it involves greater and greater effort. When we fail well, we do not blame others.
The consequences of failing badly are severe. We can derail our entire lives if we do not handle setbacks well. We all need to learn that failure is never fatal but actually our teacher. Failing badly involves blaming others but failing well can be defined by accepting responsibility for the failure and growing through failure. Failing well involves understanding and learning from failure, failing badly finds people repeating the same mistakes over and over. Failing well involves keeping a positive attitude and understanding that failure is a natural part of learning. Failing badly interprets failure as a judgement on our character or capacity. Failing well is understanding that learning is a growth process and we can learn anything if we are willing to put in the effort. Failing badly is believing that when we can't do something that is the fixed limit of our capacity. We are presenting three lessons to reveal the secrets of failing well. These three lessons may be among the most valuable things that you learn this year. We need to learn that failure is a teacher and not an undertaker. We also need to be there for each other and help those who are in danger of not failing well.
"Be kind, everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." Not only do we as a district need to learn to fail well, but we need to form a safety net and remind those around us, who are failing badly, of the lessons included in this project. This is a life long process and we will all be called on to help each other at some time. We need to build a culture of effort, belief (hope) and grit in Seaford and this can only be strengthened and reinforced when we come together as a community.