This is an awesome speech by J K Rowling on Failure in which she says:
> “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously, that you might as well have not lived at all, in which case you fail by default.”
It’s a myth that the road to success is a smooth straight line. Almost every successful person you know, will also be the biggest failures you know and have in reality failed over and over again. As the saying goes, it takes some people 10 years to become an over-night success! 😉
I publish a bit of property diary on this very blog (scroll down!), in which I not only detail my successes, but unusually in these days of the internet, also my failures and cock ups.
I have been told that I shouldn’t do that; that I shouldn’t come across as negative, as it will put some people off. I appreciate that advice and respectfully will decline to follow it. I think that we shouldn’t shy away from admitting our failures and do as most do, which is to pretend we’re perfect and fart rainbows.
I believe we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes, and I don’t think we should shun those who make mistakes. E.g. I’ve just engaged an architect to do a HMO, despite the fact that he failed to get planning permission for his last HMO project! Do you think he knows more or less about where the limit of acceptable planning is than another architect who was successful at his first attempt say?
Formula 1 drivers are some of the best drivers in the world, driving some of the best cars in the world, yet every Grand Prix some of them crash. Why? Because they are testing the limit of their car’s ability until traction fails. Only when they hit the point of failure (and in most cases instantly recover) do they know how hard and how fast they can go.
If you’d like to get my property updates by email, comment here (no one else will see your email address) it, I send it out about once a quarter now.
