Newsweek recently profiled a quick story of overcoming failure from world class violinist Joshua Bell.  Now, I’ve been a fan of Bell’s ever since he played a concert in a Washington Metro station just to make a point that we should pay attention to what is going on around us.

Bell tells of being in competition as a young person with a piece that had a very difficult, challenging beginning – - – that he completely “messed it up worse than (he) ever could have imagined.” In the end, he stopped, restarted, and did wonderfully as the pressure to be perfect was now off.  Lesson learned: For me it was a major revelation, and it taught me that when you take your mind off worrying about being perfect all the time, sometimes amazing things can happen.  The article is worth a quick read and certainly is a story worth retelling.    <image source>