Failure is not an option! This is a mantra that many of us have used in the passed. I will not accept anything other than success. It is a motivational thing that kept me and many others on track and for many years i felt that to be true as I worked through school and jobs and marriage and children. On the scale of raising children, being a failure is not acceptable. I will not and cannot fail my kids. On the other hand, the only way to fail as a parent is to not take the time and make the effort. I am not always right and I make wrong decisions but is that failure when I make a decision that doesn’t exactly turn out the way I planned. I am, of course, not considering life and death type decisions. Those decision need to be on a whole other level and thank goodness I have not had to make that many of them.

I have recently come to the realization that our society has taken a motivational saying and changed the entire culture from the top down. Our Education system is being redesigned in order to not allow anyone to fail. The bar is set so low that the system does not have a failure option. The bailouts! How many time have I heard that whatever the industry is to important to fail or to big to fail. That really makes me wonder why the bankruptcy system is even in place.

What I am getting to is that I have changed my mind on the “failure is not an option” mantra. From now on I think I will go by a new mantra and I hope as many people as possible, including businesses and government that make tough decisions every day. Try and remember that those who you are leading are looking to you for guidance and depending on you. In that, I hope we remember –

“Failure is an option, consequences are not.”