Fail if you must, but quit telling us about it

I’m going to be a contrarian here and say that I long for the good ol’ days when we didn’t see the warts on our celebrities, our presidents weren’t shown in frailty and we didn’t see how sausage was made.

Chris Borgan wrote this blog post and every Gen Y, business consultant-wannabe (and some real ones, very scary) jumped in and offered affirmations that failure is part of the process and yea, Chris! After reading this AND listening to a speech at my daughter’s high school graduation “celebrating failure,” it was just too much. My late-Boomer head was filled with visions of shining faces all beaming up at me with that expression every 2-year-old has when they have made a poo-poo.. “yea!, Johnny made a poo-poo!!”

It is a bit scary that we have created an entire generation that has been rewarded for every mistake, every failure, every effort as an accomplishment. We gave trophies for just showing up. And the only thing we have produced is a bunch of folks who feel lost without getting an affirmation that their pooping is good.

I am getting very tired of having to acknowledge effort with the same weight as accomplishment. I don’t want to clap at your guitar tuning; I want to save that for your performance. Of course every success is lined with failure, but quit redefining the failures as successes. Yes, I know that makes me an intolerant geezer, but it really is for your own good.

Suck it up, become an adult and move on. Adults know when a failure is a failure or the next step to becoming a success. That is what makes us adults. And adults do not need constant affirmations that they done good by going poop.

Save the poop affirmations for your kids. Grow up.