The “cult of failure” that’s growing among self-help gurus may be getting outta control.
“Don’t beat yourself up when you fail,” they say. “Failures are just lessons in what doesn’t work!”
That’s good advice overall. But just like most stuff, I think some folks are pushing it a wee bit too far.
As a guy named James Surowiecki wrote recently in the New Yorker…
“There’s a widespread tendency to treat failure as a badge of honor. ‘Fail fast, fail often’ is a familiar mantra in Silicon Valley. There’s now a regular FailCon, where people come to hear other entrepreneurs tell about the hard times they endured…”
Acknowledging a failure and the lessons learned from it is a very good thing.
But celebrating failure ain’t.
Save your celebrations for success.
Mark all the successes in your life — maybe your first sale, your first week in a new job, the creation of a blog site — by doing something special, even if it’s only in a small way. Open a bottle of wine you’ve been saving. Skip Domino’s and splurge instead on a gourmet pizza. Buy yourself Avengers: Age of Ultron on Blu-ray. Whatever.
Just make sure you celebrate your successes.
Learn from your failures, but don’t celebrate them.
Save celebrations for the good stuff.
