As kids we try and fail at literally everything. It’s how we learn to walk and grab things and feed ourselves. Kids try everything. But somewhere along the line we lose that.

As adults we have this idea that we’re supposed to know how to do everything without ever having attempted it. We watch a few YouTube videos and we have mastered the thing that the expert in the video spent years perfecting and we somehow expect we’ll be exactly at that level from the moment we start.

Nope. We have to TRY things first. Learning is a process. And that process begins with trying and failing. Due to age, and maybe the way our society communicates and social-media-curated-lifestyles, we have stopped valuing the the trying and failing that precedes the mastering of any skill.

I failed the bar exam the first time I took it. It was literally my worst nightmare. All the hours and years of studying, the stress of law school and preparing for the exam itself, the shame of telling all the people that mattered to me that I had failed at the one thing I’d been working toward for years. It was devastating.

And then you know what? I lived. My support network rallied around me. I had no less than seven attorneys and judges that I respected tell me how they’d failed the first time too. I had friends giving me their study materials. I had another friend recommend me for a job to help make ends meet while I studied for the next test.

I learned resiliency. Because that’s the thing we forget – if we don’t fail, we can’t pick ourselves back up. Without testing our mettle we honestly just don’t know what we’re capable of.

When was the last time you did that? When have you actually risked something? When have you tried something you weren’t sure you could accomplish? When have you learned something new? The older I get the more horrible it feels. I’m trying to learn to ski at 40 when I have never ever enjoyed a hobby where I am not in control of my feet. But I’m trying. Because learning is growing. Learning is building confidence in yourself that you still CAN learn and do something new. Learning something new opens your doors to freedom. It keeps your world big.

As adults our worlds start getting shrinking. It’s our job and our neighborhood and our relationships and our kids and our families and that’s our entire focus and then we retire and don’t know how to expand our worlds again after thirty years of keeping our head down and just moving forward.

That’s no kind of life. Try salsa dancing, learn to knit, start a strength training workout plan, take a class at your local community or online college, run a marathon. Push yourself to do something new. Learn about a new subject – bonus points if it’s one that scares you a little bit. Understand the world a bit more and build the confidence that you can do new and hard things.

Failure turns into resilience. And resilience is powerful.