Fail Safe

Today's culture is so entrenched in finger pointing and blame. Its even come to the point of joy in others' calamities. We have "fashion police" who point at, tease, and mock those who may have worn something odd or simply out of style. We have pundits chomping at the bit to report upon political misfortune. And more and more we are seeing the joy in others accidents or major "Fails". Viral video, Tosh.0, and the like saturate our market with face plants, crotch kicks, and a platform to glorify and laugh at the perceived stupidity of others. I'll admit, I find it funny in a painful way to see someone wipeout on their sled into a small pine tree. But we've almost become numb to misfortune. Unaccepting in a holier-than-thou mockery of people.

With culture skewed this way, our attitude toward failure is skewed—our attitude toward failure is wrong. We have to have the freedom to fail. In relationship, marriage, business, parenting, and with ourselves.

Failure means something was tried.

Failure can be a result of inappropriate decision-making, selfish behavior, and overall poor effort. Additionally, it can be a result of trying something, good intention, and an effort to improve.

Failure begets change.

The change begotten may simply be an obvious decision to not try and skateboard down that flight of stairs again. Outside of urban parkour, in a more common arena, the change is accomplished using attitude, forgiveness, support, initiative, etc.

• Has the spouse forgiven the other and do they decide to seek support and rebuild a marriage
• Has the entrepreneur decided to reevaluate a business process and reconstruct some methodologies
• Has the child made the efforts to put in the extra time to elevate their game to win next time
• Has the dad changed his behaviors to leave a better example for his children
• Has the employee realized that in order to achieve the promotion next year they may have to spend more time building a business instead of their resume
• Has the leader realized a need to serve instead of speak from a soap box

And those observing, supporting, and directly effected by the failure of others play a key role and must visit their attitudes and activities as well.

Nothing meaningful is fail-safe. And it must be safe for ourselves and others to fail.