Failure

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” - Thomas A. Edison

Failure.  It’s definitely not a pretty word – like daffodil, or hope, or sunshine.

We wince when we imagine it. We dread it. We go to great lengths to avoid it. The fear of it stops us in our tracks.

But you know what I have found as I am learning to become a fledgling blogger and mediapreneur?

Well, I’m right there with Edison.  Not that I’m inventing a light bulb or anything like that, but I sure am finding lots and lots of ways to do things wrong. I guess you could call them failures.

But early on in this journey, I realized that if I was going to let “failure” stop me… I’d go exactly nowhere. 

So, I am bumbling along. Sometimes it takes me 10 times to do something that a millennial would probably figure out in 5 minutes, like how to get an Amazon affiliate link to work on my blog. Or how to make a meme. Or how to set up an auto-responder.

Heck, a few months ago I may not have even known what those were!

So, just like I realized I had to embrace feeling stupid (it means I am learning something), I now know that in order to achieve my dreams, I am also willing to embrace failure. 

Or rather I should say, to reframe it – to see it as a stepping stone, the No on the way to the Yes, my teacher, the inevitable stops and starts along the way to success. 

Here is my challenge and invitation to you, dear one, embrace failure and go after your dreams. It’s OK. Really. You will survive.  You might even accomplish something amazing!