Success consists of going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
Broadly attributed to Winston Churchill
“This thought really speaks to me because as a child I confused love with approval. I felt my mother’s very strong expectations for me to excel and so if I started to do something, to learn something, like ballet or painting or piano, and didn’t instantly excel at it, I gave up. When I didn’t excel at something, I thought I was unlovable. I think that has cost me a lot in my life and I greatly admire people who start doing something and when they see that they’re not learning as fast as the other people in the room or they are not being particularly good at it, they just keep on plugging away at it. Sometimes they plug away just for the sheer joy of it. Because they love it, they don’t care to compare themselves to anybody else. It’s harder to plug away when we are comparing ourselves to another. When we keep getting good at something [despite the pace of learning] and make a career of it, we know it inside and out and know how to teach it to people who are also not learning it quickly.”
Kate Marianchild is an amateur naturalist and author of
The Secrets of the Oak Woodlands: Plants and Animals Among California’s Oaks
