Your life is a series of failures that far outnumber your successes. (and you should embrace that)11/16/2015 We all need to do a little bit more failing if we are to learn and grow as people. In short, our willingness to fail actually contributes directly to our ability to learn and develop knowledge. Derek Sivers makes the argument in his youtube video (which is embedded below) that a willingness to fail opens people up to “trying” without being self conscious, and reforming a “pass/fail” set of standards into an “experimentation” mindset. First things first, though. In order to fail more superbly, we need to be of a growth mindset and not a fixed mindset. People who have a growth mindset are able to recognize that the source of their success is their hard work and learning, not their inherent “talents”. When people in a growth mindset fail, they learn. They learn what they could do better, and how they can do better the next time. Conversely, if you attribute your successes to innate talent, then you really don't have any reason to believe that you will improve at something for which you possess no "talent". The best example of this mindset in action, in my life, is teaching and learning writing. I think that oftentimes it is easy for aspiring writers to read an author’s finished novel and discount the hundreds of hours of revising and editing that went into it. I know that students certainly do the same thing in my classroom when they are writing essays. They assume that if they have written a bad paper, it is because they are innately "bad" writers. They forget that revising and editing a first draft multiple times is pretty common practice among serious writers. I think the trick for all aspiring writers (both novelists and students), is to focus on the process and to work hard at improving writing practices rather than improving papers. To focus on the product (the graded essay) of the work, rather than the work itself, is to do students a great disservice. By grading the end product of the process rather than the revision process, we are condemning students to accept their "good" and "bad" grades without any real analysis of the work that led to those grades. As a teacher, I prioritize developing good writers over developing good papers, because: doing the former almost certainly guarantees the latter. No, failing isn't fun. But, ultimately, you cannot succeed if you never learn from your failures. If you are to be successful in any capacity, you should try to live a life full of failures. Sivers, Derek. Why You Need to Fail-by Derek Sivers. 15 feb. 2011. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhxcFGuKOys
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AuthorTrevor Rawlings is an educator at Pinacate Middle School in Perris, CA. Archives
April 2018
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