Failing always sucks. I can't think of a time when I would choose personal failure over success. However, I need to fail in life, and I need to do it often. I realize that sometimes even when I know I'm not good at something I still need to push through my failures in order to learn how to succeed. What if Picaso quit every time he messed up? Or what if Thomas Edison quit after his first failed lightbulb attempt? He didn't and he eventually succeeded through what he learned from his thousands of failures. In a creative profession it would seem that failure is not tolerated, yet we are expected to always outdo ourselves. How then are we to learn by only creating for the purpose of work? Well, we won't. We will simply keep pulling from the same safe and tried-and-true bag of tricks we know because we know they have worked in the past. I suppose Edison could have just kept using candles but he pursued his goal in spite of frustration and failure.

Trying something new in a project is dangerous; a lesson I've learned the hard way. I am learning the value of experimenting and often failing outside of work, in order to be continually growing as a designer at work without losing my job.

This doesn't just apply to design work though, any profession should always be progressing and improving. Hitting a plateau should be your worst nightmare in everything you do. The fear of becoming irrelevant terrifies me. If you are the same person, friend, brother, leader, or whatever that you were a year ago or even a month ago, shame on you. Shame on me for the times I have let complacency win.

It doesn't just happen. It takes a lot of effort, discipline, and sacrifice, but I challenge you: Grow, do, create, fail, improve, learn from it, and be better everyday. Strive for more, strive for greater, be more excellent than you are. Learn from your failed attempts, because they equip you for successes. Let's do this together. Go.