You’ve heard it before: perfection will permit no mistakes, while excellence learns from its mistakes.  This means that if you’re doing it right, you will actually make—I’m sorry to break it to you—mistakes.  And not theoretical mistakes; no, you’ll actually fall down hard a few times.  On your rear.  In public.  You’ll be embarrassed, you’ll lose money, the business will fail or your proposal will be rejected or you’ll torpedo a project.  Congratulations!  Welcome to the road to greatness!  Failure is part of the deal!  You’ll cry.  It’ll suck.  And you can survive that.  It feels awful, but it’s not fatal.  In fact, it’s incredibly useful.  Because you get a choice: to quit, or to incorporate what you’ve learned in order to become excellent.  And when you claim your failure and USE it to get better, then you become not just great, but downright unstoppable. 

This tip was first published in Being A Broad magazine, where I write a monthly column called Advice For Renegades.  Reproduced with permission.