When I was growing up in the Stone Age, the messaging around failure was clear. Failure was something to be ashamed of and therefore to be avoided at all cost. Consequently, throughout elementary and secondary school, I carefully avoided anything that might possibly result in failure. And I did a pretty good job at not failing. Until my first year of engineering when I failed economics. Opening up my transcript was a traumatic experience even though I was pretty sure I’d failed the course (I couldn’t answer more than half the questions on the final exam). I remember being so ashamed that I threw out the transcript and hoped that no one would ever know.

I wish I’d known then what I know now about the importance of making mistakes.

Research shows that making mistakes and reflecting on them actually creates new synapses in our brains. Jo Boaler, a Professor of Mathematics Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, has done extensive research on the impact of making mistakes in learning Math. There is evidence that regardless of our age, our brains are able to adapt and change. And the process of making mistakes is a powerful stimulus for brain development. She explains that when we make mistakes, two synapses are created: one when we make a mistake, and one when we reflect on the mistake.

Our understanding of the importance of failure has inspired educators at Wimbledon High School in the U.K. to have an annual "failure week" to inspire students to embrace risk, build resilience and learn from their mistakes (click here).

We're certainly not alone in experiencing failure. There are many stories of famous people who persevered after failure to eventually experience spectacular success:

• JK Rowling’s manuscript for Harry Potter was rejected by 12 publishers before finally being accepted.

• Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple was fired from the very company he began. He said,“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.”

• Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and had a failed business called Traf-O-Data before he started Microsoft. He said, “It’s fine to celebrate success but it’s more important to heed the lessons of failure”.

• Albert Einstein was expelled from school. He is quoted as saying, “Success is failure in progress”.

• Basketball superstar Michael Jordan’s famous quote is, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

• Walt Disney was fired from a job at a newspaper for not being creative enough.

The point is that we need to get comfortable making mistakes because that is when we learn the most. Innovation and change happen because we make mistakes and see new ways of doing things.

A final personal story about another one of my memorable mistakes.

I have sewn clothes since I was 15. By the time I was engaged to be married and decided to sew my wedding dress, I had worked with silk many times. I spent hours with my mom picking out the perfect silk for my dress. I bought the last 8 meters of silk on the bolt. It cost a whopping $250. I went home and for some reason that I still can’t explain, I decided to pre-wash the whole piece. And then put it in the dryer. When it came out, it was 8 meters of what looked like a dishrag. I felt sick to my stomach. How could I do something so stupid? I was in tears telling my fiance what I’d done. His response? “Well, I guess you’ll not do that again” accompanied by a hug.

It helps to be surrounded by people who are gentle with us when we make mistakes and who help us reflect and grow from our failures.

Our challenge is to work together to create a supportive environment in which we all feel safe to take risks in our learning, make mistakes, ask for help and use what we learn from our failures to "grow our brains".

Jo Boaler has 2 short videos on the power of making mistakes: “Growth Mindset for Math” (click here) and “Mistakes are Powerful” (click here).

These two videos by Will Smith are terrific. This one is on “Failing Forward” (click here) and this one is on facing fear (click here).