JANUARY 2015

I will never forget the worst mistake I ever made as a young lawyer. I was representing an artist in a pro bono case. Actually, he had a terrible case, but we thought we could make a moral argument to the other side to pay him for the mural he had painted. So we wrote two letters: a letter to the client telling him all the holes in his case and a letter to the other side making our arguments on behalf of our client.

To my horror, I realized I’d copied both letters and sent the other side not only their letter, but the letter written to our client. You know the one saying what a bad case he had.

OOPS.

I remember sitting in my office thinking I was going to be fired. This was the ultimate in malpractice. My face was burning. I’m sure I cried big snotty tears. In the end, I swallowed my tears and pride and owned up to the partner, the client, and our adversaries.

I’d like to say the other side took the moral high road and decided to pay our client despite the bungling error of the newly minted lawyer. Only they didn’t. After the dust had settled, the partner calmly asked me how I felt about what had happened. I hung my head in shame. And that’s when he said, “Remember that feeling. Now, never do that again.”

And I didn’t. I learned that lesson. The problem is, I went on to make all sorts of different mistakes.

They say that failure is the best form of learning. That you need to fail forward to really grow in anything you do. We’ve all heard the stories of the failures of the greats. Like Abraham Lincoln. He lost many an election before he became President and saved the Union. Steve Jobs who was famously fired from Apple, before triumphantly returning to lead the company to greatness. And Michael Jordan, as he likes to tell it missed many a shot in order to become, Michael Jordan.

But aside from these apocryphal stories of epic success, I’d like to know is there anyone who really likes to fail? Not me. I hate it. This is probably because in addition to being a control freak, I’m also a perfectionist. A perfectly failing combination when it comes to embracing failure. Instead, when I make a mistake no matter how small, I tend to wallow in my failure, mostly learning that I hate to fail.

Now, I know I’ve made lots of mistakes not just as a lawyer, but in all my professional endeavors. Yes, even when writing this column, (apparently fact-checking and even spell-checking is very important and not just in the eye of the beholder). And once as a young actor I missed my entrance completely, forcing the other actors to vamp desperately until someone came and found me in the band room. You can bet I never missed another entrance.

That mistake was in my control. Just like that mistake I made as a young lawyer, it didn’t happen to me, I did it to myself. If I’d stopped moving so fast and checked the mail before it went out I never would have sent that letter. Perhaps my client would have won his case.

Then there are failures that occur that are completely based on circumstances that are out of our control. Like a dear friend of mine who mounted a production of a one-woman show she’d written in New York City. We all knew and expected that this show would be hugely successful. Especially after we saw the opening night show which took place on September 10, 2001. So, while the show was a huge success for that one night, it ultimately was a failure of expectations because of course, no one was interested in going to the theater in the weeks and months following those epic events.

These were circumstances that were completely and totally out of her control. And as far as I’m concerned there were no lessons for her to learn. How could she have foreseen the world events that would have an impact on her small part of the world? She readily admits it was a failure of bad luck and timing.

But I believe, the real failure would have been if she stopped creating. Instead, I’m so proud of her because despite those circumstances, she continued on her path and to this day lives true to the artist’s life continuing to create, while also helping to cultivate other artists through her teaching.

Ultimately, we artists learn to live with failure that happens to us all the time. The parts we didn’t get because the director wants a brunette and not a blonde. The paintings that don’t sell because it’s the wrong color scheme for the buyer’s living room. The writing that never is published because the best-sellers these days aren’t the genre you picked. The real failure would be letting that rejection that “happens to us” sway us from our artist’s mission to keep creating anyway.

It’s like the great sports rivalries. There’s always going to be one team that doesn’t win. Does that one week of failure mean they don’t get back up and try again the next week?

And then there are the failures that we don’t even know are failures as they are happening. This only makes it worse in hindsight, after we realized we could have stopped earlier, preventing greater damage. I’m certain that no one ever sets out to make a terrible movie or enter into a failing business.

No, we all start with such great hopeful expectations in our endeavors. But knowing when to stop failing and cut your losses is almost as important a lesson as learning from the failure. My husband the entrepreneur will tell you how many product launches and business ideas he’s had that have never gotten off the ground.

Tune-toters for example. This was going to change how we all carried cassette singles around. Remember cassettes? Did you even know they made them into singles? His only regret was having ordered all that extra product when the market for cassette tapes dropped out. But like all great entrepreneurs the failures don’t stop him, they fuel him on to the next big idea.

The lessons we learn from each kind of failure are also different. The lessons I’ve learned from failures that are out of my control are only how I react to them. I can react badly or I can react with grace. But those failures that occur from mistakes I’ve personally made, well, the hardest part is remembering not to do it again and again–because that’s not just making mistake, that’s the definition of insanity.

And now science has even proven mistakes and matters that prey on our conscience actually help our brains to grow and change. They say this is what makes humans, humans: living with and learning from regrets. Because when I finally wash away my tears I have learned that when you do fail, it’s all about how you react to it. You can wallow in it. Or you can pick yourself up, brush yourself off and fail all over again.

Because unlike some who say that failure really doesn’t exist if you learn from it, I believe that there is such a thing as failure, and it really does stink to live through it. But if you don’t learn from how you react to those challenges then that’s the real failure.

One thing I’m certain of is that I’ve made plenty of mistakes as a parent. Mostly around the tooth fairy, she was constantly shirking her responsibilities. But because there is no manual for parenting, I’ll never know if I got it right until my children are old enough to take care of me.

But I must have done something right because my kids seem to be listening to me. I used to tell them about fear that stops them from doing something, that there’s scared and you do, and scared and you don’t, so you might as well do.” Well, recently my son shared with me this perspective about failure: “Mom, there’s fail and you do and fail you don’t so you might as well fail, it will be fine.” Smart kid, ready for anything life throws at him. Here’s hoping with that attitude, he’ll be the next Steve Jobs.