While teaching, I’ve been talking a lot about making mistakes and starting over. I find that in the classroom students rarely want to start over. They seem to think that they need to get it right the first time or not at all.

I shared that all good artist make a ton of work that no one ever sees.

Pablo Picasso produced about twenty thousand pieces of art

Albert Einstein wrote more than 240 scientific papers

Johann Sebastian Bach composed a cantata every week

Thomas Edison Filed over one thousand patents

Richard Branson started 250 companies

Joyce Carol Oats published forty five novels, thirty nine story collections, eight poetry collections, five dramas, and nine essay collections

While in college our pottery professor told us to break out bad work, to ensure that no one ever saw or used it.

For a brief moment failure felt wonderful, it felt free, I was liberated. It felt so good to throw dishes and hear them crashing into the ground. I highly recommend that you try it.

Recently I was cleaning the studio, and I threw piles of scarves away. ( don’t start stalking my house and going through my trash.)

Throwing the first one out was hard, and then it felt okay, and finally it felt liberating. I was letting go of pieces that just didn’t work. I was giving myself permission to make mistakes, big, bad , ugly ones that I couldn’t save. I gave myself permission to fail over and over again.

And then I forgot, that failing is good. This seems to be lesson that I have to keep learning.

Say it with me:

You might fail, it’s okay

It might not work, do it anyway

I’ve been thinking a lot about failure lately, and our mindset around we. In school we learn that failure is bad and to avoid it at all cost. But outside of school I’m realizing that failure usually isn’t that bad, unless we make it be.

Almost everything that great that I’ve made, started from solving a failure.

I tried a lot of designs, they didn’t work

I tried to save them, and made them worse

I spent a lot of money , and did a big show, and didn’t make as much money as I wanted

I meant to leave my teaching job, but I didn’t

These aren’t really failures, at least not the negative, horrible, hate yourself kind. They’re the kind that come with living fully.

I”m not sure that you can reach your full potential without falling a few times. If you’re not failing, then you’re not daring enough, you’re not pushing boundaries, you’re staying safe.

While safe feels good, sometimes oh so very good. It’s boring.

And so each one of us will fall and together we will rise .

I have a new perspective on my teaching and my purpose, and continue to work to allow myself to fail and fail miserably in the studio. ( it’s very possible that’s happening right now) I”m sure I will all fall many more times, and I will get back up, and each time it will be with more grace and beauty.

Please join me.