Why failing is an excellent thing to do

ANNIE DEADMAN IS HERE TO HELP YOU, THE EASY WAY!

- ANNIE DEADMAN

Failure, says Wikipedia, is the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective. It smacks so much of the negative side of exams, marriages and jobs. But, from the point of view of personal change and betterment (is that a word? It is now!) then a certain amount of failure will reap huge rewards.

Take training for a race. I ran a couple of half marathons in 2019. I’m sounding nonchalant, I’m not and I wasn’t. Running isn’t my thing, but I’d decided that a marathon was much too long (did one once, never doing it again) and my friend Stacey, queen of the 13-miler, told me her strategy was nine minutes of walking, one minute running. ‘Isn’t that cheating?’ I asked. No, she told me. It’s a method. So I embraced that method, did two half marathons, with a best time of two hours seven minutes.