Share Your Failure
The Human Robot
Recently researchers tried to create a more ‘human’ robot. They took a robot that is designed to interact with humans and intentionally programmed it to make some mistakes. The researchers concluded that the mistakes made by the robot made it more likable than a perfect robot who made no mistakes at all. The humans interacting with the robot found his faults endearing, not infuriating.
I think there’s a lot to learn from this about our way of life.
People appreciate hearing about failure, since it’s what makes us human
In life, and in parenting in particular, ‘doing it all’ is the holy grail. Managing work, keeping our home semi-livable, taking care of the kids and leaving a sliver of time to ourselves. It is probably one of our greatest challenges.
So naturally, we would think that when we meet someone who manages to perfectly juggle it all, we would become best of friends. After all, this person is living life as it should be lived!! Yet, usually we hate seeing people who are perfect. Honestly, when I see someone who takes time for daily exercise while keeping everything perfectly balanced, I just want to punch them in the nose…
Share Your Perfection and Your Failure
We all strive to be perfectly balanced, and we really should. Balance in our own life, as well is in our household, provides stability and enables us to perform the tasks that we are responsible for. This is why we should definitely strive to maximize our performance and be as ‘perfect’ as we can.
However, if we want to keep a healthy approach to such a way of life, we need to recognize that by virtue of being human, we are inevitably imperfect, and we will definitely fail from time to time. Moreover, these failures are something we should share with our friends and family.
People appreciate hearing about failure, since it’s what makes us human. Keeping up a facade of perfection while things aren’t going great is a waste of energy that ultimately harms us internally, but worse yet, it drives away friends and can influence our family in a bad way.
This doesn’t mean you should totally let go of the pursuit of balance and start whining chronically, it just means we should all try to take it easy a bit more, and pursue perfection with a more relaxed and forgiving manner.
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