The Biggest thing you can teach someone

For years, it puzzled me why so many with a learning disability went on to do so well. No matter if I was speaking to a small group of parents or to the student body at the University of Notre Dame, I often got asked one question, “So why do some make it, and others don’t.”  At the time, I did not know, or even know, how to put it into words.  At first, I took a hard look at the lives of famous individuals who had a disability, such as Nelson Rockefeller, Walt Disney, George Patton, Tom Cruise, Richard Branson and Jay Leno (a list can be found at http://dyslexiamylife.org/who_els.html) Then I focused on those successful individuals who didn’t have a disability, but who overcame adversities like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and baseball players like Jesse Owens.   When I examined this large group of people, there seemed to be a common thread between them all. Most of them never did well in school, even if they had the ability to do so.  It is my belief that it all came down to one small thing they learned in their life… something that made the difference between sitting home and feeling bad about their problems and going out and getting what they wanted out of life.  The one thing they all had in common was failure; through their failures in school, they learned early on that failure was an option… they learned that failure could be good because if they failed, they could always try again. I believe if you’re not failing, you’re not working on hard problems.  It also comes down to how the person deals with failure… how they dust themselves off and go and try again. If they let failure get them down, it will hold them back from trying again. So the greatest lesson I feel you can teach someone is not to be scared to fail… to learn from failing.  If you feel like you’re failing a lot, and your self-esteem is taking a hit, do something that you know you will not fail at to get your self-esteem back, and then try again.  In case you don’t want to take my word for it, see what the experts had to say about failing:

 

“An expert is someone who can make all the given mistakes in a given field.”

 

“As I said, there is nothing wrong with failing. Pick yourself up and try it again. You never are going to know how good you really are until you go out and face failure. “
 

“Better than succeeding little by little is failing at one go. “

 “Don't be afraid to fail. Don't waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It's OK to fail. If you're not failing, you're not growing. “

“ A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
Albert Einstein “

“ The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you'll make one. “

Elbert Hubbard

 “A well-adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous. “
Alexander Hamilton

“A failure is not always a mistake; it may simply be the best one can do under certain circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.”
B. F. Skinner

”Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something.”
Morihei Ueshiba

”Consider every mistake you do make as an asset.”
Paul J. Meyer

”I really don't think anything I do is a mistake. It could be if I didn't learn from it.”
Fiona Apple

by G. Sagmiller http://dyslexiamylife.org/