Happy New Year!

What is it about the flip of a calendar page that makes us think we need to dive into self- and professional-examination mode?  Is it the thought of a fresh slate?  Is it the relief of the end of the taxable year?

For me, it was …  about time.

I have been accused of being too analytic, and I can easily annoy my husband by providing too many options for situations that need decisions.  And while I can certainly be introspective, I’ve never been good at seeing the big picture…  of my life, anyway.

So today I began my quest to get more clear about what I want to accomplish and where I want to take my business.  I’ve been using several great — and free — tools from my new favorite site, SuccessNet.org.

One of these tools is a series of questions that ask you to take a hard look at what you believe and how you behave, what you want and what you don’t.  It asks you to define your dreams, and to describe how you’d like others to describe you when you aren’t listening.

One of the most difficult questions for me to answer was “What was your greatest failure, and what did you learn from it?”

The question wasn’t difficult for the reason you’d think…  that it was too painful to recall the failures, or that I’d have trouble deciding which three to discuss.

The problem was that I couldn’t think of any failures.

Don’t get me wrong.  I have certainly missed the boat, made mistakes, let people down, and not achieved to the level I had hoped.  But outright failed?  That was a tough one.

I eventually came up with a few, but more importantly, I realized that by not failing, I had stunted my growth.  By only choosing paths that were safe and familiar, I missed out on a lot of adventures and the rewards that accompanied them.

I grew up believing that failure was unacceptable, and so I created a world where failure was highly unlikely.  And that’s a sad state of affairs.

One last comment regarding failure.  Schools today have adopted a dangerous approach to failure.  Like me, they’ve decided failure is unacceptable, so they create a world where students can’t fail.  Maybe they lower the bar, or they give repeated chances to those who refused to take advantage of previous opportunities, or they find an excuse to allow a student to squeak by.  Teachers are not to blame, and to be fair, administrators believe they’re serving the will of the community.

Take it from a veteran teacher and someone who has rarely failed, shielding kids from failure only makes it tougher for them later.

So this year…  I vow to fail at something, because to fail means I tried something new and learned something new, and that’s what real education is all about!