"If You're Not Failing ..."

In my previous post, I dealt with the topic of making friends with your mistakes. I concluded the post with the quote: “If you’re not failing, you’re not living.”

Now, I admit that I selected that quote after sifting through a lengthy Google search result on the phrase “If you’re not failing.” In the name of full disclosure, here are some other things that Google says you’re not doing if you’re not failing:

… you’re not trying.

… you're not moving forward.

… you're not growing.

… you’re not learning.

OK, OK. I don’t know about you, but reading this list of things I’m not doing is starting to bring me right down. (And this is exactly the effect the Strengths Movement would predict – i.e., if you focus on what you’re not doing, you feel weak and somehow lacking.)

So what would these professional quotesters have us do – try to fail more? Well, that doesn’t seem to cut it either – does the Daily Improviser’s Creed say that we should aspire to subpar performance? Somehow I don’t think the concept would fly with too many customers expecting things cheaper-faster-better.
Well, to quote Neil Young: Don’t Let It Bring You Down.

I think what the quote starter “If you’re not failing” is really getting at (no matter how you finish it) is this: Of course you’re failing, in the sense that none of us is succeeding all the time! And the sooner each of us recognizes that – that is, the sooner each of us befriends our own personal brand of missteps, flubbed cues, and attempts to reach beyond our grasp – the quicker we’ll recognize and appreciate the fact that we are actually …

… trying.

… moving forward.

… growing.

… learning.

It’s only when we try to deny our human capacity for error that we bump each of these outcomes up into the “not” category.

With this realization, I think I can now cheerfully pick myself up, dust myself off, and appreciate the delicious irony in my favorite result from my Google search:

“If you’re not failing …

… you’re not succeeding.”

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