You Have to Risk Failure to Become Excellent

Sometimes, I've been fortunate to come across words written by someone else that articulate something that resonates for me as well. That happened again to me this morning as I took a lingering morning finishing Sarah Winman's A Year of Marvellous Ways. A lovely book.

I like to cook. I particularly like to cook when I have space to take my time. I rarely use a recipe, but sometime I'll scan several recipes on-line to get a feel for something new and then go do my own thing. Some things, like soup, I never use a recipe for and the results are never the same, but usually yummy. Sometimes it's awful. I've not exactly looked for a way to explain what I do when I cook, but when I saw these few paragraphs in Winman's book I knew I'd found it.

"Finally, the last thing he needed to tell her about was his recipes. He told her something he had never told anyone: that his secret ingredient was the life he had lived.

"Peace stared at him. What do you mean? she said.

"Wilfred leant in close and whispered, Everything goes into my bread. Names. Songs. Memories. Every batch comes out different to the next but what we are looking for is not consistency buy excellence. You have to risk failure to become excellent." p 214