What’s the fun of failing?

Screwing up may be your best asset

I was inspired by an interview with Alec Baldwin (American actor) I saw a while ago, I think on Instagram. He said something that has really stuck with me, and which I think holds the key to freedom for so many of us. So it’s my thought for the day/week/month/year/lifetime:

It’s all failure.

Someone asked him if there was still room for failure for an actor these days, or is one too many, and you’re out of the game. He said, “It’s all failure!” Nothing ever really hits the mark of the vision, the hopes, the creative goals, the targets that are set. It all falls short.

And the assumption then is--So what? You don’t stop. That’s just the name of the game. If acting is your life, your career, your work (vs. “becoming a star”), it may never be as good as we can imagine it to be. It is what it is, and the game is the game.

It’s a process. It’s intention and direction and motion and feedback and correction and persistence, to the finish. As a mentor of mine said – “He wins who endures to the end”. It seems we’re all in this big game (life, and all its subsets), no matter what. And it’s not about perfection--it’s about excellence (as good as we can do, given our limitations.) We all seem to be wired for some sort of progress—big or little. And how you deal with that makes a lot of difference.

If you have no failure, you haven’t had a dream. Change “failure” in your thinking to “experience.” So, dream on, fall short, do the dance with élan, and the world will be attracted to your freedom...

Thanks, Alec, for the inspiration about success.

Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. -- William Saroyan