Josh recently shared an article by one of our favorite bloggers, Seth Godin. The blog post, “Non-profits have a charter to be innovators” reminded me of my favorite quote by Samuel Beckett:

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Fail better. I love that phrase. It seems so oxymoronic. The idea of positive failure seems odd, but it’s so accurate. We rarely see the multiple failures which occur before success. The politician who loses several races before winning the White House. The innovator who fails with many products before launching a world changing device. The baseball pitcher who toils in the minors for years before winning the World Series. We’re so blinded by success we quickly forget the preceding struggle.

In my daily work as a mental health counselor I often use Beckett’s quote. As human beings we are fallible. We will fail countless times. But as long as we continue striving for improvement, as long as continue to fail better, we find life becomes more rewarding.

At ResourcesUnite, that’s been our goal since the beginning. Fail better. We started with some simple ideas and continued to expand as we had success in some areas and failure in others.

Seth’s blog post talks about nonprofits needing to be bolder, to be braver. It’s an intoxicating idea, one that we’ve enjoyed struggling with at RU. We are squarely in the social service field and our major goal is to assist all social service agencies and nonprofits in realizing their mission more effectively. In doing so we will all have a much greater impact on our community.

Communities have lots of problems. Fortunately, communities also have people who are driven to make a difference. So let’s continue to be a bold community. Let’s be brave in our dreams and plans. Let’s challenge the status quo and welcome failure. And then fail better.

(And let’s never forget the RU Rally Cry that started it all. Join our conversation on Facebook.)