There ought to be a class in middle or high school that teaches kids that when something doesn’t work out, it doesn’t mean it or you are a failure.
Fortunately, I have no fear of failure. I can’t pinpoint exactly when the idea of failing stopped bothering me. Maybe it was at 680 News where the rush of breaking news was ripe for errors. After a while, when you’ve made a mistake in front of a million or so listeners, you lower your expectations just to stay sane.
Perhaps it was when I came so close to dying from sepsis. One of the things I told myself as I lay in the ER at London’s University Hospital was, if I get out of this, I’m going to take guitar lessons.
After I recovered, I took one lesson from the nicest musician in the world, and hated it. I decided, to heck with this! It’s too hard and I don’t even like it. Did I fail? I prefer to think I changed my mind. Later, I took up drums instead and I still bash away and continue to learn.
Relearning My Limitations
A couple of weeks ago, I pretty much wrecked this website. It was a case of thinking I knew more than I did. You probably didn’t know it happened because it got fixed fast thanks to a friend who knows more than I do.
I was attempting to configure what I thought was just one page for a new feature on the site. Here and there, a little at a time, I changed the font, added details and posted photos. All the while I thought I was working on only one new, unpublished page – meantime every change I made altered the whole website.
I didn’t realize what I’d done at first, because I don’t visit the site like others do. I fiddle around in the inner workings and generally know what I’m doing. I’ve changed pages, added and deleted them and all sorts of things. I thought I was pretty good!
Then I saw the landing page – the front end – and realized that all of the navigation buttons were gone. They vanished! So, a visitor could see the front page but never go deeper to the blog or anywhere else. Yikes! The font was also different and there were little random photos that made no sense out of context. What the heck had I done?
HELP!
I sent an urgent note to my friend Andrew at City Media. I couldn’t figure out how to fix what I’d broken. Andrew, having a cooler head about it, could think rationally. He asked “can you restore a backup?”
I was so hell-bent on “fixing” my mistakes, I completely forgot that my website’s host records a complete backup of the entire site every couple of days. I contacted them. They restored a backup from a date before I started fiddling around. All was well before my next blog post published, which is when the most visitors visit.
What Did We Learn, Lisa?
I’ve hired professionals for several website changes over the years. One time, I hired a guy for something so small he refused to charge me for it. Most times, I know where my expertise ends. This time, I got – as my Dad used to say – “full of myself” and tried to go beyond my capabilities. And then I could see no other way out except trying to undo what I’d done, which was impossible. Yikes.
I took it seriously but it didn’t dent my self-esteem. I didn’t even tell Derek about it until it was almost fixed. It’s just one more marker along life’s path that says, do not pass – you don’t have the proper qualifications. OK, okay, I’m not a web genius! Now, tell me something I don’t know.
Of all the frustrations that can occur with a website – going offline because of an outage, getting spammed to death, getting hacked – this was a pretty easy fix. After all, backing me up is one of the things I pay my host to do. It’s humbling when the limit of one’s abilities is shown in such a clear fashion. But a failure? Meh, throw it on top of the pile!
Sometimes our greatest achievements and successes are our greatest failures for the lessons and knowledge we gain through the attempt can benefit us going forward.
Absolutely!
I think what I have learned is there are two types of people.
Those who make mistakes and learn from them. And those who make the same mistakes over and over.
(There is no group of people who don’t make mistakes.)
So either you’re smart enough to learn from your failures, or you aren’t perceptive enough to detect the lesson.
What separates the two? I don’t know.
I think one of my missions as a mentor/teacher is to normalize failure and making mistakes. I know my mentees and students love the stories when I talk about falling flat on my face. Which I have done a million times in my career as a journalist.
Oh, and you know how much I love this saying: Anything worth doing well is worth doing badly until you can do it well.
I love that, Dan! You’re so right. Everyone makes mistakes. I go easy on myself for them, for the most part. And therefore I go easy on other people. But I also watch some who beat themselves up over the smallest thing. It must be a hard way to live.
The ref to guitar lessons in your recent article prompted my two cents.
It’s always sad to hear when someone gives up on learning guitar because it’s harder than expected.

Learning guitar can be difficult. As a professional guitarist for most of my life, I admit, yes, the guitar has its challenges, but more often than not the truth is due to the actual playability of the instrument that can make it discouraging for the student.
A guitar with a high nut or saddle, high action, heavy gauge strings and uneven frets can quickly destroy the learning experience for a lot of folks. Acoustic guitars are also more difficult to play than an electric. Beginner and less expensive guitars can also present a myriad of additional problems not found in more expensive guitars. And remember, if the guitar is not intonated perfectly it will always sound ‘off’ or not in tune. Frustrating.
There are so many variables on a guitar that can take the hope and joy out of learning. If your fingers can’t push the strings down with ease, the TV remote can quickly replace mastering a G chord.
Investing in a more expensive guitar that’s fully adjustable makes all the difference. For any of your readers wanting to learn the instrument, I would suggest staying away from lower priced guitars. Have the retailer put on 9-42 or 10-46 gauge strings and opt for an electric. A few months later you can add an acoustic for around the campfire.
Not only do electrics have thinner necks and more options for adjustment, no one can hear your mistakes when practicing!
Dick Joseph
Lisa, my take on this subject. We can fail, but, we all WILL make mistakes. Failure and mistakes are very often two very different things. Failure is a catastrophe that one, or more, cannot fix. If one, or more, can undo or fix this happening than it is a mistake. The one, or more, I refer to may be me or the or the other(s) I asked for assistance. The mistake I refer to may be an errant attempt in the first place that I myself fixed by deciding to abandon the attempt in the first place or me and my helper fixed through collaboration. For example, I “FAILED” Grade 10 in 1960, or so I thought. Indeed, I was angry with my teacher, my parents and the world, for an irreversible decision that couldn’t be fixed. In fact, I later realized, this wasn’t a “FAILURE”, it was MY MISTAKE for not passing and the decision to hold me back for a year was a life-altering act of love; designed to teach me that this mistake, while devastating, was reversible through collaboration with my teachers and parents and, most importantly, repeat Grade 10, change my life-style, work harder, and pass on to Grade 11. Today, I’m 80 and, after surviving many more mistakes, I’m in a very happy place!
That’s an interesting take, Terry.
So, I launched a side business more than a year ago and despite putting a ton of effort into it, it never caught on. Was it a mistake? No. It would have been a mistake to not try. Was it a failure? The business “failed” but I stlil don’t see it as a failure. I congratulate myself for having the confidence to give it a try.
I think it’s all in how we analyze it. Thanks for your comment.