Quote-A-Day: Day 106

You've never known your #best, until you've known your #worst. #QuoteADay #Day106 #edchat #edu #BeBetter

Let's face it.  We've all done things we're not proud of.  Goodness knows I've made my share of poor decisions.

There are two types of failure that exist.  The first is the failure we want to experience, the positive failure.  This failure is the first step towards success; the necessary ingredient to truly learning something new.  The more times we experience this type of failure the more learned we have the potential to become.  This is the failure that we learn to welcome.

The second type of failure is different.  This failure often stems from a poor decision that we have made, and almost always stems from a situation where "we knew better."  This is the type of negative failure that can destroy relationships, hurt us deeply physically and emotionally, and leave scars on the lives of others.  This type of failure doesn't provide a block to stumble out of.  It provides a hole that we often have to crawl our way out of, and it can take a long time to return to the surface.

This is the type of failure that truly pains us; the type of failure we learn to avoid.

But, I propose that even though we want to welcome the first type and avoid the second, we still need our share of "negative failure" to help us realize all we are capable of.  By learning what not to do, and learning about the scenarios we never want to experience again, we are better able to shape ourselves to be the people we most want to be.

I'm a firm believer in the fact that we have to experience some type of "rock bottom" before we can see what we're truly capable of.  If we haven't yet seen ourselves at our worst, how can we expect to be able to show ourselves at our best?

This doesn't mean we should seek to experience the horrible failure; life has a way of presenting us with those opportunities, and being human, every once in a while we'll throw ourselves down that hole.

We must, however, use those negative failings to highlight who we don't want to become, so we can better sculpt the person we do want to be.