Learning to try again ~

One of the things I remember about my mother is she tended to try things once and if they didn't work or they caused problems she didn't try it again.



When I was growing up she talked about how her and dad went to a party and they had served tuna fish at the party. The tuna fish was so good dad really enjoyed it. And had seconds. The tuna salad had been made with tuna packed in oil. He got sick with had vomiting and diarrhea. And so my mom always bought tuna in water and always told that story about dad getting sick one time from tuna packed in oil.



I learned that from my mother and I've had to unlearn it. For a long time I would try something and it would fail and my brain would say it will always fail. That usually translated to when I would mess up that I will always fail at that and so I should never try that again. As I've gotten older I've learned that's not necessarily true and that failure is not a bad thing. I've learned to accept when I fail as a learning experience instead of something wrong with me.



Programming computers helped with that a lot. As I learned to program I would try something and it would fail and I would try something again after a small change and it would fail over and over and over to the point that it felt like I was doing the definition of insanity, Repeating the same thing over and over and getting the same results. But I wasn't. I was adjusting and tweaking and trying to get things working. And I succeeded a lot more than I ever thought I would.



And I continued to succeed a lot more than I ever thought I would. It's kind of nice to have learned how to fail and keep rolling. I wish I had learned that skill sooner.