Fail Forward

Then he began to curse and swear, saying, “I do not know the Man!”  Immediately a rooster crowed.  And Peter remembered the word of Jesus who said to him, “before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.  So he went out and wept bitterly.  Matthew 26:74-75

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, you will fail at some point.  You’ve probably heard the saying “To err is human, to forgive divine.”  That was written over 250 years ago by Alexander Pope, paraphrasing an ancient saying that was common during Roman times.  In a devotional I have, there’s “Rules for Being Human.”  Let me share:

Rule #1:  You will learn lessons.

Rule #2:  There are no mistakes – only lessons.

Rule #3:  A lesson is repeated until it is learned.

Rule #4:  If you don’t learn the easy lessons, they get harder.

Rule #5:  You’ll know you’ve learned a lesson when your actions change.

Norman Cousins said, “The essence of man is imperfection.”  Failure is simply a price to pay to achieve success.  When we learn to accept this definition of failure, we can start moving ahead – and maybe even failing forward.