This morning, I was working with my daughter so that she could earn some money. She has recently connected the dots between the coins Mom and Dad carry and purchasing power. She wants some of this power so that she can buy more stuffed animals. Why? I don’t know…she has dozens. But she is very motivated to earn and save money so that she can go to Toys R Us and pick out another stuffy.

Seizing on the opportunity to teach her the value of money, I made her an offer. For every sheet of letters she completes, I give her 5 cents. In order to complete a sheet, she has to trace the letters properly and then make the sound/s of each particular letter. She has been doing this for about a week – and her piggy bank is filling up – but today she decided to do it quickly. Since she is still learning how to do the sheets, “quick” translated into “sloppy”. The letters weren’t done correctly and she didn’t make the sounds as she went along. Still, she wanted to get her 5 cents and was devastated to learn that I would not be paying her for that particular sheet.

This incident made me think of the direction that our culture is drifting. I have heard the twenty-something generation referred to as “sticker kids” because they have been raised to get a star no matter what they do or how they do it. Fearful of making any child feel inadequate, we have responded by taking away all bench marks for success. Competition has been eradicated because then we would have “winners” and “losers”. Class valedictorian is no longer the person who obtained the highest grade point average but instead the most popular kid in school.

What is the result? Are our kids more understanding or tolerant of each other? No. We still deal with bullies and racists and all other types of exclusion. Instead, this generation is infused with an overall apathy towards life. Rather than move with purpose, they drift along. They have very little drive to learn or grow. They are unpracticed in the art of pushing themselves when life becomes difficult. Rather than learning how to be personally accountable for their choices, these kids rely on their parents to do their battles on their behalf. We have successfully inoculated our children against failure.  I can relate a couple of examples shared with me by dear friends:

I have a friend who is in charge of hiring at a large organization. Most of the people she hires are younger, and she has actually had parents (yes that is plural) call her up and ask her why their mid-twenty’s child did not get the job. Let’s move beyond the fact that it would be utterly illegal under Canada’s privacy laws for my friend to divulge this information. But why on earth are these parents asking this on behalf of their children? If the young adults want to learn how to be successful in a job interviews, should they themselves not be the ones to make that phone call?

In another example, a younger associate of mine was recently pulled over for drunk driving. When she was confronted with her actions, she rejected anyone who attempted to help her process the matter, responding instead by saying, “Everyone does it.” There was no acknowledgment that she could have put someone’s life in danger (her own if no one else’s), no understanding of the potential for far reaching ramifications of her bad decision. There was only anger at other people who dared to discuss it, fear that she would lose her license, and a call to a lawyer to get the charge thrown out.

Tragically, no learning comes from this kind of response.

And yet, failure is one of the greatest gifts that we have. When we screw up, then we have the opportunity to grow, learn and change. Through accepting and living out the consequences of failures in our lives, we mature and gain wisdom. Experts tell us that we can actually learn more from our failures than our successes. But we have to choose to do so.

I see clients in my practice all the time who have failed spectacularly. They have neglected the needs and desires of their spouses. They have sought intimacy outside of the marriage. They have allowed the demands of their kids, their jobs, their extended families to choke the life out of the “coupleship” with their spouses. They have smothered their own voices, refusing to articulate their own needs and desires. They have made a series of bad choices which have led to destructive patterns in the relationship. And then they come to me when their sex lives (and usually their marriages) are falling apart as a result of these choices.

Because we have gravitated to an “everybody succeeds” culture, we have overlooked the value of failure. And yet it is that very failure which will allow for new growth in their relationship. Allow me to explain. We human beings gravitate to comfort. We rarely change unless pushed to do so. And it is usually the consequences of failure that give us that push. Our failures act as big red arrows pointing to the things we need to work on in our lives.

These clients come to me when their failures make them realize that they can no longer settle for comfortable. They have to roll up their sleeves and get to work. Hard work. Not “I get a sticker because I tried” type of work, but the type which requires me to dig deeper than I have ever dug before, look at the things in my life that I haven’t wanted to examine too closely, and choose to make new patterns in how I think, speak and act.

For the clients who choose this difficult path, amazing things happen. Their spouses fall in love with them again, they reinvest emotionally in the relationship, they set healthy patterns which enable the marriage flourish, and their sex life becomes something that others would envy. Rather than glossing over their failure, these men and women choose to acknowledge it, take responsibility for it, and learn from it.

I am very proud to say that by the end of our time together, Riley did learn this lesson. She pulled out a second sheet, slowed down, and focused on the task at hand. She completed it beautifully and was awarded with her nickel. Toys R Us, here we come!