Failure and Success

In my last post, I talked about my hopes and dreams for Allie. I said that I hope that she will experience and learn different things. My wife is a teacher and when we talk about learning, she often talks about the kids that she thinks are smart or successful. And she mentions that sometimes the smart kids are actually the ones who have the most difficult time learning. This may be because they can be perfectionists or people often tell them that they are smart so they think that they can achieve things through their natural ability instead of effort. They also do not see failure often so they don't know what to do when they fail. And when they fail, they become frustrated and give up.

According to an article on Psychology Today,

“Entity Theorists” are folks who attribute success to an innate and unalterable level of ability – a specific entity of talent. “Entity theorists” tend to say things like: "You're gifted." Or: "You're a natural."

Contrarily, “Incremental Theorists” believe that success is achieved through putting in the necessary hard work. “Incremental Theorists” tend to say things like: “You achieved ‘this’ because you worked very hard. I’m so proud of you for putting in that extra discipline, effort, patience and courage – along with your natural abilities.”

According to Dr. Dweck, a big key to a successful life is to embrace being an “Incremental Theorist” – so when failure or disappointments occur, you are ready to put in the necessary discipline, effort, patience and courage to overcome them!

Basically, discipline, effort, patience and courage are hugely important core values for kids to grow up embracing.

I hope Allie accepts failure and learns from them. I hope she realizes that failure is a only a temporary bump to a successful life. As someone way smarter than me once said,

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

- Winston Churchill