I have trouble with failure. I mean I can lament on stereotypes all day but there’s at least some truth to Asian parents generally valuing educational accomplishment over anything else. It’s a function of culture; many Asians find education to be the primary tool for advancing one’s place in society. Then, with extremely strong family hierarchical structures, children are often pressured into reaching and maintaining a very high level of achievement in school. In America as in China, the selectivity at institutions of higher learning adds additional drive to focus on academic success.

This cultural/societal combination has lead, in general, extremely accomplished Asian families. They lead in education levels, income, unwanted pregnancy rates, life span, crime rates. Truthfully, lots of macro benefits. I have gotten some great habits, skills, and cultural experiences.

But I had a side effect from this focus on accomplishment, I HATE failure. I’m so adverse, I often find myself not trying at all.

See when I was young, failure was distinctly distained. Falling short of the expectation was not coddled, but derided, and demanded explanations or redoubled effort next time.

But I had a thought, if I never tried I couldn’t truly fail.

As you can tell, I was a genius.

I took less risks, didn’t focus or try hard in school, never applying myself in any direction. What was average teenage apathy was reinforced by a feeling of victory from defying my controlling parents.

Told you I was a genius!

Anything I did like working on was squirrelled away in darkness [writing and reading], or had distinctly separate reward structures [swimming].

My aversion to trying new things, apply myself, or put myself out there; for fear of failing, was in and of itself, a failure.

I’m trying to remedy that. I’m trying to be more comfortable with stepping out of my comfort zone and trying to practice doing new things, even if it causes a lot of embarrassing mistakes. And not letting myself be discouraged by criticism, failures, or missteps. In fact, I would like to cultivate those experiences. Where once I thought that failure was not the path to success, I now understand that failure is actually the right direction, and inaction is the enemy of growth.

It’s never comfortable, but I’ve found myself learning.

I believe in the growth of myself. And that gives me motivation to keep trying.

Failure isn’t not an option, it’s the path to success.

More clichés.

I hope you fail a lot, on a wide variety of things. I hope you give it a fair shot the second or third time as well. I hope you’re kind to yourself when it doesn’t work out, and you have the courage to try again