When my little people were maybe 3 and 5, like in this adorable #TBT photo (you’re welcome for the gratuitous shot), they fired my own words back at me for the first time.  We were eating at some fast food place, undoubtedly with the type of playscape to which I credit my children’s outstanding immune systems, and I opened a ketchup for each.

(By the way, I know some of y’all are judging me for the 3 year old with fries.  Don’t try to hide behind your screen.)

“What about your ketchup, Mommy?”

For maybe the 100th time, I replied, “I don’t like ketchup.”

A small face screwed up in thought, and then brightened and tossed back, “But you always tell us we need to try something new, even if we’ve tried it before, because we might like it!”

Yep.  I DID always say that, didn’t I?  But ketchup?  The point of that motherhood wisdom is to teach them to like things that have some redeeming value.  Not ketchup.  However, I decided to take one for the Mom Team and answered, “Well, you got me.  I do always say that, so I will try some of yours.”

So began my love affair with ketchup.

That incident taught me that, as a mom, I was right – we should always try something new.  That became a bit of a mantra for me from that day forward, and I’ve made a point to deliberately try something new (or try again) ever since, at least every year.  I was 33 then.  Sometimes it worked – guacamole (thank you, Jillynn Shaver, Becky Fenlaw and Julio’s on Duval!), raw tomatoes (yea, Shelley Beauchamp, a Groupon and whatever that nice restaurant was in Virginia with the excellent caprese salad!), or coconut (that one took a few years of putting on Dolores McNab’s pile-on faithfully every Chapel Choir Tour announcement party, but it worked!).  Sometimes it didn’t – I gave poi two shots and that’s a big NO, as are mushrooms, although I’ll revisit that one later.

I hadn’t decided on my “new thing” for this year. It’s a big one – 40 – so I was kind of hoping for something a bit more extraordinary than a run-of-the-mill veggie.  And boy, did I just figure it out.

I’m trying something new – failure.

Since I was born, I’ve been a perfectionist. I wish I could go to therapy and blame my parents for their ridiculous expectations. Given that the one time I failed something in school, my dad bought me a five pound bag of M&Ms and told me not to sweat it, I think that option is off the table. No, I’m wired how I’m wired.  Internally I believe wholeheartedly in doing things excellently.

I’m also wired to be lazy.  I’d rather sit and read a book and eat some chips than do pretty much anything I’m “supposed” to do.  I’ve spent my life dealing with the internal war these two things create.  Typically, the “good side” – productivity and excellence – wins.

When you spend your life this way, an inevitable side effect is that you do things fairly well, the majority of the time, leading to the expectation by the world around you that you will continue to do so.  However, because I am human and sometimes the “book and chips” side wins – or, because I’m human and sometimes I just mess up! – I fall short of people’s expectations of me from time to time.  As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that this has led to an increasingly dramatic reaction from people.  It’s like there’s an inverted relationship between performance and grace for high achievers – the higher and better you perform on a consistent basis, the lower the level of grace given when performance falls short.

I should note that I’m not talking spiritually here, lest my Jesus friends panic.  The only place I’ve come to terms with failure and grace is in my relationship with God.  No worries there. I’m talking 100% here and now.

Now, there are many people who are high achievers who don’t give a rip what anyone else thinks, so the level of grace afforded them by others is completely inconsequential.  I’m so amazed and impressed by those people – I am not one of them.  A big part of my perfectionism is wanting to do things well, not just because I feel they SHOULD be done well, but because I want to make life better for people in any given situation.  People who don’t care about what people think accept their own failures with more of a shrug and a “next time” attitude, not stopping to worry about how it affected others because they know they will essentially make up for it and succeed the next time.  Because they refuse to base things on the opinions and thoughts of others, and consequently the grace (or lack thereof) afforded them by others, the “others” in question eventually back off.  These people succeed because they aren’t afraid of, or intimidated, by failure.  For many of them, they don’t even consider failure to be failure!  So they keep moving forward without letting failure, or perceived failure, stop them.

I want that. I want to be that kind of person.  It’s not exactly how I’m wired, but as I mentioned, I’m certainly wired to be lazy and read and eat chips all day, and I’ve conquered that over and over for 40 years.  Why can’t I decide to move past my perfectionism in the eyes of the outside world and embrace the possibility – the inevitability – of failure?

That’s going to be my new thing.  I’m going to achieve or fail, but I’m not going to do either with an eye toward the reactions of others.   Anyone want to join me?

PS I’m still going to continue down my road of trying to find a new food to like this year, so if you have any suggestions for 40, please bring ’em on!