From the Desk of Canton Winer, Managing Editor

Please stop trying to be perfect.

Many of us have this twisted notion that everything we do must be flawless. Any flaw or failure is a sign of weakness. Any less-than-intelligent question is a sign of stupidity. I’m here to tell you that this is a total crock.

Our fear of failure often keeps us from succeeding. We are reluctant to try new things because we might not be good at them. Life, however, is a trial and error process. We all stumble a few — or maybe more than a few — times, but we usually get back up.

The fear of failure is a problem I see frequently at The Fordham Ram. Too many times I have told a friend that they should write something for The Fordham Ram only to hear the refrain, “But I don’t think I’ll be good at writing about that.” This response makes me cringe. You’re definitely terrible at it if you don’t even try. If you don’t try, you’ve already failed.

So go for it. Worst case, you’ll write one truly terrible article that only your parents, your grandparents and a few friends will read. And guess what? They’re all going to love it anyway.

We need to break out of our boxes and try new things. For example, I’m from Florida, a state with no mountains and where coconuts are a far more frequent sight than snowflakes. Yet, when my parents took me to Colorado in elementary school, I decided to give skiing a try. I fell a few times, lost one of my skis once and ran into several (dozen) complete strangers in futile efforts to reclaim my balance. But, now I am actually quite good at skiing, especially for a Floridian.

Let’s all stop hesitating to try new things simply because we might embarrass ourselves. We can’t all be good at everything. Everyone has imperfections, and most people are too busy worrying about their own imperfections to notice anyone else’s. Life is more fun if you let yourself make some mistakes.

Now I’m going to pull the obligatory Bill Gates example. (Hey, at least I didn’t use Steve Jobs.) I think we can all agree that Gates is a pretty successful guy. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, is currently the world’s richest person. Successful though he may be, Gates owes his success to failure.

Bill Gates’ first business venture was a flop. The company, Traf-O-Data, sold the Traf-O-Data 8008 (clearly, creative name selection is not Gates’ strong suit), a product designed to read the raw data from roadway traffic counters and create reports for traffic engineers. When Gates and his business partner, Paul Allen, tried to sell the Traf-O-Data 8008, the device didn’t even work. The demo — and the company — was an utter failure.

Yet, Allen cites this failure as a key to their success. “Even though Traf-O-Data wasn’t a roaring success, it was seminal in preparing us to make Microsoft’s first product a couple of years later,” Allen said.

Successful people like Gates are successful not because they never fail, but because they learn from their mistakes when they do. They accomplish great things because they challenge themselves. If everyone simply stuck to what they were good at from the moment they popped out of the womb, all we would do is cry and poop.

We should follow Gates’ lead. We should register for a class that will challenge us, even if it means sacrificing the A. We should try out a new sport, even if it leads to a few faceplants. We should sign up for salsa dance lessons, even if we might step on some toes. We should actually write that article for The Ram, even if a stranger might not agree with it.

If you’ve never failed, you’re not trying hard enough.