In the final season of Oprah’s famous talk show she invited back on the show the chastened author James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces. This book, sold and promoted by the author and publisher as a memoir, and chosen by Oprah for her book club, was proved not be as true as advertised. The media thrashing that resulted prompted Oprah to publically castigate Frey as a way to deal with her feelings of embarrassment and anger and drove Frey to flee with his family to France for a few months.
Oprah’s intention when choosing to invite James Frey back on the show in her final season was to apologize for what she called her “lack of compassion.” Frey was grateful saying “that’s very big of you” and went on to explain how he had learned from the experience and how it had impacted him and has influenced his decision making as a successful independent publisher.
“I know I was wrong,” he said, “but that’s what you’ve gotta do sometimes, to learn to be right.”
I was so struck by the wisdom of this statement that I immediately wrote it down. It reminded me what my boss had said to me when I was working as a time management and productivity coach. He said “adults learn by making mistakes.” So right! In fact I think we learn so much more from our mistakes than from our successes.
Oprah knows this and so does James Frey and by the end of this show they were laughing and celebrating the mistakes they had made. So….what mistakes do you have to celebrate?
Flickr photo by Chris Campbell
