Embrace failure as a part of life’s important journeys.  Failure is an important part of success.  It is how each of us, who knows how to walk, learned to do it.  It is how each of us, who knows how to ride a bike, learned to do it.  We failed and we failed and we succeeded just a little and we kept on, and then we had success.  Failure means that you have tried something, and learned from it.  Failure means that you have set your sights higher.  Sometimes, when we set our sights high, we get afraid.  We may be overcome by “what ifs” – e.g. What if I fail?  So what do we do?  How do we adults, who forgot we learned to walk, get ourselves to face those fears?  One thing we can do is reward failure!  When you try something and fail, you deserve to pat yourself on the back and say, “good job, you took that as far as you could, way to go!  Nice work, you found the edge of that idea”.  You also can say to yourself, “well, you did a poor job at (fill in the blank), now you have an opportunity to make a connection by apologizing and finding out how that could go differently”, whoopee!  What if we really valued and praised our failures – think of all the potential things we might try.  Not all failures are alike – some failures will be painful for a long time.  That’s ok.  Usually, those bring about really important deepening and knowledge.  But there are many possibilities, that we face everyday, that seem more doable when we embrace failure.  Today I will try something in a new or different way, and embrace my failure joyfully.