In America, you can make mistakes, fail, and it doesn’t matter.

My brother in law posted this link to Facebook today. My initial reaction was aww about how different Japanese culture is from American. But then, the very last paragraph stuck out to me.

In America, you can make mistakes, fail, and it doesn’t matter. It is a fundamental feeling that to sometimes be incorrect is natural. In addition, rather than thinking about mistakes and failures, American’s have curiosity and say, “Let’s try anyway!”

There it is. That’s what describes Americans. It describes American attitudes towards life, business, and work.

The article describes Japanese thoughts about failure. Here they are:

In Japan, there is great fear of failure and mistakes in front of other people. It is better to do nothing and avoid being criticized than to taste the humiliation of failure. As a result, there are things we wanted to do, but did not, and often regret.

Rather stunning, isn’t it? It sure makes you realize how often we fail. We fail every day when we aren’t able to cross everything off of our to-do list. But that’s what  is so great about a week. There are 5 working days. So, we can try tomorrow.

Here’s to trying.

“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm” ― Winston Churchill