The most often repeated and least digested business/life/ministry/sports maxim is: You Learn from Failure.  

• Failure is success if we learn from it.  Malcolm S. Forbes
• Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.  Chinese Proverb
• I have not failed.  I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.  ~Thomas Edison
• Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better.  ~Samuel Beckett
• Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.  ~Henry Ford
• There is no failure.  Only feedback.  ~Robert Allen
• Failure changes for the better, success for the worse.  ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca
• You always pass failure on your way to success.  ~Mickey Roone 

So if that is true why don’t we act like it?   We don’t really think about our failures do we? Not really.  Not like we think about our successes.  We own success - we rent failure.  We frame successes and bury failure. We cherish success and run as fast as we humanly can from failure.  We pretend that everything is okay and don’t let others in to see the stuff in our lives that has missed the mark. 

Every December I try to map out the next year and say something to the effect that I really can’t make the same mistakes again.  Blah Blah Blah – nothing really in it. 

Not this year.  I have a blog.  A few people read it.  So here goes my list of failures.  Time to own them and, if the proverb is right, learn a few things – for real this time.   If you have the guts join the party and post your own. 

1. I fail to listen - really listen - to my kids and my wife unless I have to.
2. I am a part owner of a business that failed to launch on time in 2010.  Launching could have impacted thousands of needs this Christmas.  The failure is in part my failure.  My failure was in not having the guts to stay in the fight day in day out because of my hate for conflict.
3. I am not honest with my time estimates and too often fail to be where I say I will be when I say I will be there.
4. I fail to read the bible unless I have to for writing or teaching or church or something outside of myself.
5. I fail to be as transparent as I think I am.
6. I fail to make clear cut decisions and communicate them effectively.  I never close things out – really draw sharp lines of expectation for myself and others.

I know there are more that I will think of and I figure that if I am willing to post them maybe I will be willing to really learn from them. How about we stop kidding ourselves and really try to learn from failure.  After all, our failure to learn from failure is a failure we can learn from right?  Or something like that.