I wrote this to my son 12 months or so ago, at a time when he had just missed getting on a Grad Scheme he really wanted (and before he had been accepted on another). He reminded me of it last week. It was taken from a post I had drafted a little earlier but for some reason had never published.

12 months on  from that letter I am about to change jobs again. I have the same feelings of excitement and apprehension; and in my past two years as the Director of Marketing at a Top 100 law firm, I have had very much the same run of successes and disappointments – and so the learning goes on . . .

Looking back over some 36 years of corporate law, I am struck less by the successes – of which there were a number – as by the disappointments. To some extent it is the latter that have defined my working life as a lawyer. And yet they have also allowed me to develop, to adjust, to grow: and so, in a strange way, they have been responsible for the successes. They have shaped how I have seen things, and have informed the risks I have taken.
 
Disappointment, both professional and private, and how we deal with it, makes us the people we are. This is not about having a glass half full or a glass half empty. My glass has always been more than half full. Rather it is about how we learn. Life would certainly be more straightforward without disappointment – and there might be considerably less pain.
 
But it would not, in the long run, be half as much fun.