How Failure Can Be Your Kid’s Best Friend

By Tim Elmore
http://growingleaders.com/blog/
June 30. 2014

Benjamin Franklin said, “The things which hurt, instruct.”  Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure. The same is true for students. It’s all what they allow to reside in their mind. I think Warren Wiersbe was right when he said, “A realist is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified.  A skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned.”

My friend Kyle Stark develops young men for a living. He is the Director of Player Development for the Pittsburgh Pirates. As he watches young teens enter professional baseball, he observes: “Failure separates those who think they want success from those who are determined to win. Failure narrows the playing field. The first people out are those who blame others, next out are those who lost interest. The weak go first. The strong learn to hang in there and keep bouncing back until they win.

“The thin-skinned rarely win due to brittle egos and apprehensive attitudes. Thick skin comes from falling and failing. The falls produce wounds that heal and reveal a connection between resiliency and a peculiar resolve which accepts failure as a temporary condition. They accept both good and bad so not to forfeit the blessing of learning from both. 

“The thick-skinned prepare to win by increasingly expanding their willingness to endure pain in affirming the degree of true desire. They allow every challenge to serve as an opportunity to changes for the better. They continue to learn that bitterness is poison and quickly purge its deadly influence on both their endurance and desire. They see a prize in every problem and potential in every person. They see their faults but never focus on them. They know that whatever is on the mind will eventually get in the mind. The power of positive word choice determines each choice of the next deed. Wasting time talking about everything that cannot change and about nothing that can is pointless.”

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