One of the possible side effects of a focus on success above all else is a crippling fear of failure; reports of stress and mental illness in grade school are m

One of the possible side effects of a focus on success above all else is a crippling fear of failure; reports of stress and mental illness in grade school are mirroring reports of total breakdowns in college, often over things that aren't significant at all. The problem is that we're telling these people that failure is not an option, that if you fail now it ruins you. The more we say it, the more true it is, as students race for the A+. It is, after all, an arms race. However, we miss an important lesson, that failure is inevitable and even important. Some venture capitalists will not fund someone who hasn't failed 3 times before, because they know that failure is a function of both effort and environment, and a failure followed by more effort shows that when the environment lines up the entrepreneur in question will still be putting in effort.