FAIL! Why losing big can be a winning strategy -Wired Jan. 2010

Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
By Jonah Lehrer December 21, 2009 | 10:00 am | Wired Jan 2010

HOW TO FAIL
SCREW UPS, DISASTERS, MISFIRES, FLOPS. WHY LOSING BIG CAN BE A WINNING STRATEGY.

"Bob Dylan ... was right: There’s no success quite like failure."

1Check Your Assumptions

Ask yourself why this result feels like a failure. What theory does it contradict? Maybe the hypothesis failed, not the experiment.

2Seek Out the Ignorant

Talk to people who are unfamiliar with your experiment. Explaining your work in simple terms may help you see it in a new light.

3Encourage Diversity

If everyone working on a problem speaks the same language, then everyone has the same set of assumptions.

4Beware of Failure-Blindness

It’s normal to filter out information that contradicts our preconceptions. The only way to avoid that bias is to be aware of it.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/

Forgiveness

Georgia O'Keeffe

The way to You
lies clearly in my heart
and cannot be seen or known to the mind.
As my words turn to silence,
Your sweetness surrounds me.
-Saná'í

The proof of the sun is the sun itself,
If you require this proof,
do not turn your face from Him.
-Jalal al-Din Rumi

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a hundred times.
Come, yet again, come, come.
-Jalal al-Din Rumi