„ We need to think about failure differently. I’m not the first to say that failure, when approached properly, can be an opportunity for growth. But the way most people interpret this assertion is that mistakes are a necessary evil. Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them, we’d have no originality). And yet, even as I say that embracing failure is an important part of learning, I also acknowledge that acknowledging this truth is not enough. That’s because failure is painful, and our feelings about this pain tend to screw up our understanding of its worth. To disentangle the good and the bad parts of failure, we have to recognize both the reality of the pain and the benefit of the resulting growth.“
When in high school, I returned home after a ski weekend with friends. When I returned home, my relatives, who didn't ski, asked if I fell at all during the weekend. I remarked that I had, especially while navigating some expert trails. They consoled me saying "that's OK, maybe you'll do better next time."
I was confused at first until I realized that they thought of falling as a tragic outcome instead of a natural part of the learning process.
Probably mostly a function of them having no idea what skiing is like. If you never fall you either only use boring routes or ski very slowly - or you are professional skier and have such a breakneck speed you can’t fall (but even then it happens looking at Schumacher)
- Ed Catmull (from the book Creativity Inc.)
edit: by way of the marginalian, which is excellent, one of the best sites out there- go read it: https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/05/02/creativity-inc-ed-...