One of the things I’ve always said is one of my skills is the ability to make big, messy mistakes.  I participated in a starter marriage that lasted 18 months.  I wrote a business plan about a decade ago that I spent near 2 years pitching to angel investors with no success before I ultimately abandoned it to join the corporate ranks.  The list is long.

The beauty in making big mistakes is that you get big learning through them if you are paying attention.  I call this “scar tissue.”  Scar tissue is not only the lesson learned from failure, but it’s also the memory of the pain that accompanied the acquisition of that lesson.  Scar tissue is what prevents us from making the same mistakes over and over.  Scar tissue is what wisdom is made of.

If you wish to become wise, you need scar tissue.  To build scar tissue, you need failure.  To find failure, you have to take risks.  So, risk leads to wisdom.  Wisdom leads to greatness.

Are you taking enough risks?