Jim Dale once said “You cannot learn anything from success, you only learn from failure.” And today I experienced a failure — something professional that I put a lot of work into, which I thought was going to be accepted, ended up being rejected.
There was a moment of numbness, followed by about an hour of sadness and unhealthy snackage. But then things changed.
I started getting to work, building things in places where I had lazily neglected to build things. Suddenly I am finding myself industrious, on mission, productive.
None of these useful things would have happened had I received good news rather than bad news. I most likely would have coasted along on that success, until eventually getting tripped up by my entitled laziness.
Jim Dale was right.