Attempting anything new, anything worthwhile, involves failure. Toddlers, for instance, don’t learn to walk without falling—a lot. As children, we didn’t even think of these setbacks as failure. We were willing students with encouraging parents to coach us. Is it possible as adults that we’ve forgotten how to learn from our failures? Is it possible that we’ve become so conditioned to immediate gratification that we mistakenly believe that new skills or new habits should come easily? Before you give up on that New Year’s resolution you were so excited to embark upon, reflect on what the “master teacher” may be telling you. Write it down. Then, if the goal is still worthy, commit to pursuing it again. And when the master teacher appears again, thank him for the lesson.

Your thoughts? What goals did you set that you are now learning from?