How My Cat Taught Me It's Okay to Fail

I was facilitating a leadership workshop a couple of weeks ago when my cat decided to join in on the fun. He laid next to me on the windowsill, just at the edge of the camera’s reach. You could make out his furry little body trying his best to lick himself clean.

I knew from his positioning that there was no way he would stay on that ledge. He was too unaware of his surroundings, not paying attention to how little ledge was actually behind him, and he was completely consumed by his cleaning process. In short, he had no concept of how big he was compared to the relatively narrow space he was consuming.

As I was leading the participants through an exercise, I could feel my attention drifting to the side, worried the cat would fall. I called it out into the room, (since my audience always knows when my attention strays,) and I told them that I was pretty certain Zaki would fall at any moment. Rather than try to protect him from the fall, I knew it was better to let him fall and learn from it. This would certainly be a lesson he’d need to learn sooner or later, unless I planned to stay permanently by his side to prevent every mishap.

Not five minutes later, with a particularly vigorous lick, Zaki tumbled backwards off the ledge. The participants laughed. I laughed. And then quickly checked to make sure he was okay - without even a bruise to his ego he landed on his feet after the 3 foot drop and moved on with his day.

I, on the other hand, understood that this minor incident was helping my young cat to learn new boundaries. He understood at that moment that he’d have to pay attention to his surroundings, that he could fall, and that it wasn’t a good idea to interrupt my meetings (ha – that last one is more wishful thinking on my part!) But in reality, he has never fallen off the ledge again. Or any other ledge, for that matter – at least not that I’ve been witness to.

And while this was such a small moment in time, it made me realize how often we try to protect ourselves or those we care about from making mistakes, or from falling off the ledge, when in reality most of life’s lessons need to be learned from experience. Imagine the friend that’s in a relationship you don’t agree with and you try to shortcut their heartache by telling them to end it. First of all, that is always bad advice because they likely won’t listen to you, second of all, only when they are truly ready to move on will they do what is best for them.

The same goes for “how to start your business” or “how to be a better leader”. You can read all the books you want, take all the advice your peers or superiors can give you, or listen to podcast after podcast on how to be a great leader, but at the end of the day you’ll have to just try it out on your terms and make your own experience. And from there you will learn what it means to be a great leader for you.

The more we step in to protect or guide or manipulate an outcome, the more we take away the opportunity for ourselves or someone close to us to learn and grow. So while it might be uncomfortable to watch someone make choices we don’t agree with and our instinct is to step in and help, it’s often best to just let them try it out their way and decide for themselves if it worked or not.

When have you stepped in to try to save someone from failure? What happened?

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