Authority Comes From Failure

by Glen Stansberry

It's really simple: You can't become an expert until you've failed at something.

Yet it's funny how people with authoritative titles never talk about their mistakes. In fact, it's a taboo. We want to put our trust in someone who's more of an "expert" than us. It makes us feel safe and gives us warm fuzzies.

For example, you'd rather not be in the dentist chair and have your dentist proudly telling stories of botched root canals. And nobody wants to believe their doctor ever made a wrong diagnosis.

But they have. Many, many times.

This is where the world gets it wrong. It's not really 'failure' if we view it properly: it's learning. You don't know what works until you know what doesn't work. Failure is all part of the learning process, and anyone who says differently is delusional.

I'd rather a chef tell me how many times he got the recipe wrong before he finally made the perfect pancake.

So don't worry when you fail. It's going to happen, and it should happen. Often.

Just don't make the mistake of using it as an excuse to quit.

Further Reading: Here's a post from a couple years back that I love and still reference today - "There Is No Effort Without Error and Shortcoming".


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Image Credit: Oncle Tom

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Glen Stansberry writes at LifeDev, a blog that helps people make their ideas happen. You can follow him on Twitter here.