On Learning from Failure and Success

“Failure lies concealed in every success, and success in every failure.” - Eckhart Tolle

I have long been a proponent of learning from both my failures and my successes. It took many years to do the latter. Successes are so easy to dismiss as “Finally!” or earned, or worse, deserved.

We patiently teach our children how to be gracious winners as much as we teach them to be gracious losers. It can take years. Do we also have the same patience with ourselves as adults?

Every completed work I do has potential to fail completely and certainly has multiple little failures (mistakes) within it. And every piece that does not work out, either at all or at least how I wanted it to, has many parts to it that were successful and that I liked.

I learn from every project I work on. Sometimes I learn something totally new that I had never done before. Sometimes I re-learn a lesson I thought I had completed but didn’t.

The quietude I have now as an artist that was elusive while I was in the professional field has given me the chance to understand Eckhart Tolle’s quote at a slower, more deliberate pace. The quietude was necessary for space of thought.