The Courage to Fail

IF ANYONE IS SKILLED at something, it’s usually easy for them to prove it.

A good carpenter can square a corner without even measuring. A professional chef can dice an onion so fast the onion barely has time to object.

Meanwhile, some of us demonstrate our abilities by proving—repeatedly—that we probably shouldn’t be left unsupervised with power tools and sharp objects.

Then there are the rest of us…who mostly discover our talents by learning what we are not good at.

The other day I saw a sentence in an online job advertisement that made me laugh out loud:

“Have the courage to suck at something new.”

Now that sounded like a job description I was already highly qualified for.

If there were Olympic medals for “trying something new and doing it terribly,” I’m confident I’d at least make the podium.

That little slogan reminded me of a famous line delivered by Clint Eastwood in the movie Magnum Force. His character, Dirty Harry, offered a piece of wisdom that becomes truer with every passing year: “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

When I was younger, I believed my limitations were merely temporary misunderstandings between me and my potential.

Experience corrected that theory.

Over time I compiled an impressive résumé of things I tried and did poorly: hobbies abandoned, projects that looked much better in my imagination, and a few decisions that seemed brilliant—right up until the exact moment they weren’t.

Simply put, I attended the University of Hard Knocks, where the tuition is high and the homework is occasionally humiliating.

But strangely enough, all that fumbling around taught me something useful.

Failing at a few things trimmed down my ego, sharpened my judgment about people, and gave me the courage to keep trying anyway. Somewhere along the way I rediscovered something written long ago by the wisest man who ever lived:

“NEVER lean on your own understanding.”

That one sentence would have saved me a great deal of trial and error if I had paid attention sooner and applied it to my thinking.

Understand, God sees the entire map. I can barely see the next intersection.

There were times when I ignored that wisdom and failed for obvious reasons. But there were also times when I did everything right and still appeared to fail.

Those moments puzzled me.

Later, sometimes much later, I realized that what looked like failure was simply God steering events toward a better outcome than I could imagine at the time.

My foresight was short. God, however, was playing the long game.

My dad once planted a simple piece of advice in my mind that has steadied me ever since:

“Do the best you can. When you’ve truly done that, you’ll never have to worry about how things might have turned out if you had done the best you could.”

That principle brings a lot of peace.

So now I try to start each day with a better strategy.

Instead of relying on my own brilliance—which history has proven to be unreliable—I hand the day over to God before it even begins.

Because relying on my own judgment is a little like taxiing a fully loaded airplane down the runway while holding the wrong checklist.

You may look confident rolling toward takeoff… but somewhere behind you a mechanic is standing on the ramp waving both arms wildly because the landing gear is still sitting in the hangar next to a confused-looking forklift driver.

At that point, it’s generally a wise idea to stop and reconsider your flight plan.

Far better to trust the One who designed the aircraft, wrote the flight manual, and already knows the destination.

And that brings me back to the line that started all this:

“Have the courage to suck at something new.”

That may be good career advice, but I’ve learned something even better. Read the following carefully. It actually works!

Have the courage to ATTEMPT something new. Have the humility to FAIL at it. Do the best you can with what you’ve been given. Then, place God at the top of the list.

Trust the Author of the flight plan to get you safely where you were MEANT to go.

After all…when God is in charge of the cockpit, even a turbulent takeoff will always lead to a perfect landing. May God bless you with that kind of courage. I'm glad He granted it to me.

Copyright 2023, Revised March 4, 2026; Gary Landerfelt; MyPericope.com