Mistakes are normal. Everyone makes mistakes. They are to be anticipated and faced head-on for the lessons they hold.
This is a revelation for so many girls that it bears repeating: you will make mistakes, and it is up to you to figure out what you can learn from them. Let honesty, humor and wisdom guide you. Fail upward. Emerge stronger.
Girls need challenges and grit to grow up strong, like trees that withstand the wind and the adverse weather. A “perfect” upbringing—if there is such a thing—often lacks the stress, tension and challenges that anyone needs in order to become resilient. Girls need to “stand up to the storm” as much as boys do.
The best way for parents to guide their daughters is not to protect them, but to prepare them with grit-building experiences, to equip them with entrepreneurial skills, and to condition them to learn from failures.
Amy Wilkinson identified failure as the shared common denominator among 200 highly successful entrepreneurs that she interviewed. One was Sara Blakely, the creator of Spanx, who learned as a young girl to recognize and embrace failure, thanks to her father's mentoring, which included asking her each night after school "What did you fail at today?" Wilkinson calls such successful failure strategies “failing wisely.”
Failure itself didn’t generate the success of these extraordinary entrepreneurs. Learning from failure was the key. Wilkinson’s entrepreneurs didn’t hide from failure nor did they hide their failure from others. To fail wisely, they placed small bets, set a failure ratio, believed enough to persist, and turned setbacks into strengths. The Silicon Valley startup mantra, “Fail early, fail often,” echoes this.
Entrepreneurs don’t give up. They have grit and a tenacious dogged perseverance that drives them toward their goals. When they’re knocked down, they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and incorporate what they’ve learned into their next moves. They refrain from casting blame.
I'd love to hear from you about how you acquired the grit to go on, and how you encourage the girls in your life to develop it. Share your story with us in the comments below!
