proverbs 28:13 (lb), a man who refuses to admit his mistakes can never be successful. there are two key words there, mistakes and successful. and they go together. there is no success without making mistakes.
mistakes are how you grow, how you experiment, how you figure out what works.
one pastor tells his staff that he wants every staff member making a major mistake each week. why? if they’re not making any mistakes, they’re not growing. they’re not pushing the envelope. they’re not taking risks. and if they’re not taking risks, it doesn’t require any faith. and if they don’t have any faith, they are being unfaithful.
we only grow by experimenting. and when you experiment, you’re going to make mistakes. so i want everybody to make a major mistake every week. don’t make the same one every week. if you do that, there is a real problem. if you’re making the same mistake every week, you’re not learning, you’re not growing, you’re not taking notes. GOD’s having to teach you something over and over. the point is, if you don’t take any risks you never grow.
the freedom to fail is the freedom to grow. this has profound implications for parenting. if you provide such a safety net for your little child that he or she never has an opportunity to fail, never in a competitive environment, when you play them games you always let them win and they never fail, guess what? you’re doing them a dis-service. you’re setting them up for greater pain. that’s not the way the real world operates.
the way the real world operates is sometimes you win and sometimes i win. nobody wins all the time. nobody. if you set up an environment where you protect your little darling where they never have any difficulty and they never have any bad feelings, they never fail and they never lose to somebody else, it’s an unrealistic bubble you’ve put them in. and when they get out in the real world, they’re going to collapse.
just a thought from the front porch…
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