Show Your Kids; Trying and Not Succeeding is not the same as Failing

This was tweeted by J.K. Rowling:

Speaking as someone who would never have succeeded if she hadn't first failed on a grand scale, I enjoyed this.







Comments

mirmac1 said…
Yes! Thank you Melissa. Add Einstein.
11/30/15, 5:42 PM
Anonymous said…
Love the sentiment! But the Einstein bit is contentious at best:

http://dyslexia.learninginfo.org/einstein.htm
http://www.albert-einstein.org/article_handicap.html

-ML
11/30/15, 8:00 PM
Jet City mom said…
One of my favorite examples is Abraham Lincoln.
http://www.rogerknapp.com/inspire/lincoln.htm
11/30/15, 11:34 PM
Anonymous said…
Thanks for the lift up, Melissa! Thomas Edison keeps me going: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

Trillium
12/1/15, 7:33 AM
Anonymous said…
Not a fan of Edison and his thieving ways. Edison < Tesla

HP
12/1/15, 12:06 PM
Outsider said…
These quaint anecdotes are so Failure 1.0.

If you want to teach your kids about failure, mention this: the CIA and FBI could have easily prevented the 9-11 attacks with reasonably competent professional effort. But their reward for failure was near total power and a 10x increase in budget. That's failure 2.0.

Accountability virtually no longer exists in our society unless you are a football coach. "Success" in the future will consist mostly of spinning your continuous failure to get more power and higher budgets. Luckily, public schools are not a bad place to learn that lesson.
12/1/15, 1:30 PM
Melissa Westbrook said…
Outsider, those are failures of entities/government. This thread was about personal achievement.
12/1/15, 2:05 PM
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