Most Parents Want to Teach Their Children to Succeed

Last night things got really rocky in our house when my ten-year-old had a breakdown while trying to build the garage for his motor city out of a cardboard box. This is a project he's been planning for days, which is just like decades for a ten-year-old. I'm not sure what went wrong, but something sure did and the angry tears of failure started to flow hard.

Those tears sting. I know it and so do you. We've all felt them flow. When the thing you want seems to elude you, when the pieces don't come together, when you tried your hardest and it ends up in flames, those tears are bitter and beautiful.

As I watched him cry in a fit of miserable discouragement we repeated the lesson I've been preaching a lot recently. Embrace the failure.
Failing fabulously is the path to where you want to be if you don't quit.

If I only teach my children one thing, I want to teach them to thrive in failing -- and it's hard because failure doesn't feel good. However, if you master failure the prospects are glorious. Failure and genius roll hand in hand. The path to evolution is almost always paved with painful, heart wrenching false starts and things that feel like a failure.

I want to vote for the candidate that had to stand in front of all their volunteers, staff, and supporters at about 9:30 p.m. on election night and say, "We did our best. We came up short. I concede." And then went home and started planning their next run for elected office. My money is on that person because their conviction is stronger than the sting they felt in defeat.

I want to watch the movie who's writer shopped their screenplay to twenty-nine studios and got rejected each time. However, they believed in their story enough to shop it to the thirtieth studio who made it a blockbuster.

I want to read the book written by the author who got enough rejection letters from publishers for their manuscript to wallpaper their office - and their dining room. That author who couldn't give up on their words, who ran out of options and didn't think twice about self-publishing a best seller - that's an author whose words I want to read.

I want to listen to the music by the singer/songwriter who had to produce their own album because no one would touch it. You know the one, the overnight success who's been playing clubs in the dark for fifteen years after waiting tables all day. That musician who came out of nowhere, but was always there and never gave up. That's the music I want to hear.

I want to spend my money on the technology that is in its 7.0 version. It launched and failed. They launched it again. It was buggy. They launched it again, there was a security breach. But they kept launching it. They didn't trash it. The investors got nervous, maybe even pulled out. But they built on the wisdom gained in the miserable failure of previous versions. That technology is going to be a solid bet.

I will lay down money every single time on the person who gets out of the ditch after rejection and keeps doing their thing, when it's broken, to an audience of no one, when no one is buying, even when, maybe especially when they feel invisible. I want to follow the person who assumes no one will follow but they keep leading anyway.

While most parents want to teach their children how to succeed, I know for sure I want to teach my children to fail because if they can fail without flaming out, success is a remarkably low benchmark. Failing greatly, learning from those failures, and moving forward smarter and stronger is the kind of momentum that can change the world.

That is what I want for my boys, and for myself, and for you.

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Lisa Hayes, The Love Whisperer, is an LOA Relationship Coach. She helps clients leverage Law of Attraction to get the relationships they dream about and build the lives they want. Lisa is the author of the newly released hit book, Score Your Soulmate and How to Escape from Relationship Hell and The Passion Plan.