What Have You Failed at This Week

We just got back from a much needed family get-away this weekend (where I, of course, still found time to work). Anyway, my son started watching “Meet the Robinsons.” Iit’s been about three years since he’s seen this movie. He’s still at the age where whatever movie he watches, becomes his all-time favorite and he’ll watch it a gajillion times before moving on to the next (he just finished a run of Titan A.E.) That last time he was on a “Robinsons” run, I blogged about it. In short, the theme was to never give up. As the movie says, “keep moving forward.”

So on the drive back home we were talking about the positive lesson the movie teaches and my wife recounted the story of Sara Blakely, creator of SPANX (which it seems is some kind of form fitting undergarment that makes the wearer look slimmer, or gets rid of panty lines, or something like that. Whatever. Apparently women really, really like them). She’s now the youngest, self-made female billionaire (a business she started with $5,000 savings). She was raised by her dad to embrace failure. Each week at the dinner table he’d ask Sara and her brother, “what did you fail at this week?” This was such a big deal, she and her brother would go out of their way to try different things just so that they’d have an answer for him. It taught them to go out of their comfort zone. To be unafraid to try new things. Sara credits her ability to embrace failure as the reason for her success.

So, I’ll pose the question to you: “what have you failed at this week?”

• HDR?
• A dolly shot and rack focus at the same time?
• Your first AfterEffects project?
• A timelapse?

Why are you still reading this. Go out and fail at something already.

A Forbes video spot on Sara