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Show me someone who has never made a mistake and I will show you someone who has never accomplished anything meaningful in their life. They are losers, people who are generally timid and lazy — and usually selfish because it’s all about their precious feelings.
They prefer to stay in a safe, albeit boring, comfort zone and rely on others to create the circumstances around which they live their life. And then bitch about it when their needs aren’t met or they feel slighted in some way. In other words, they wimp out and fail to do much of anything that matters, either to themselves or the world.
A mistake that haunts me to this day is an interview I had with a professor at an elite university. The professor was sponsoring a foreign student that the FBI suspected of having ties with a foreign intelligence service. I was able to bond with the professor and we had a grand old time comparing notes about travel, dogs, and the pain of long commutes.
The interview sailed along and eventually I mentioned the foreign student in whom the FBI was interested in learning more about. The professor offered lots of background information; I wrote copious notes. Then he asked this question: “What do you plan to do with this student?”
