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Actually, Failure IS an Option

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Two weeks ago, I sat in a parent-teacher conference feeling as though I had just swallowed a rock.

Ms. James and I were going through the motions of an annual individualized education plan review. This was the fourth year in a row the two of us had gone through the process together. For three years, we talked about my son, and this year we talked about my daughter. Ms. James showed me Kendall’s latest test scores, aptitude tests and curriculum adjustments, then I signed on the dotted line. As in previous years, I noted the drive to the middle school lasted longer than the actual meeting.

Then Ms. James fed me the rock.

“I think Kendall is letting her perfectionist tendencies hold her back.”

She didn’t need to elaborate. I knew exactly what she meant.

Kendall has inherited my fear of failure and avoidance of real challenges.

I’m not sure when or how I first began rejecting anything that wasn’t a guaranteed success, but I know I didn’t inherit the trait from my mother. When I was in elementary school, she ran for the board of education and lost. I will never forget standing in our kitchen when she told me the final results. I burst into tears, but she didn’t seem bothered at all.

“I can run again,” she said in her usual matter-of-fact tone. (She successfully did the next year.)

But her words were empty to me. All I could think about was that the voters liked someone else more than they liked my mother.

Unfortunately, I grew up (and even kind of old) fearing the same thing would happen to me if I took risks.

I had to excel at everything I did. If I couldn’t excel, I didn’t even try.

Looking back, I missed so many opportunities and denied potential relationships for fear of defeat, failure and rejection. The demands I put on myself to be an overachiever often resulted in being an underachiever.

Fortunately, at some point, I figured out that the best moments have absolutely nothing to do with making it to the top and everything to do with the adventures along the way, the people we meet and the lessons we learn. Some of our riches memories are rooted in learning from our mistakes, and not even trying is a greater failure than doing our best and falling short.

I just don’t know if that’s something I can teach Kendall or if it something that she will have to learn the hard way like I did.

In the meantime, that rock Ms. James fed me is still sitting in pit of my stomach. As a mom, such things take time to digest.


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