Mark Epstein, MD, is an American author and psychiatrist who integrates Buddhism with Western psychotherapy. A meditation and yoga practitioner, he has written numerous books about ego, trauma, sexuality, and finding wholeness.
CLEAR ALL
Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it . . . the upward spurts vary; the plateaus have their own dips and rises along the way. . . .
This is how great intellectual breakthroughs usually happen in practice. It is rarely the isolated genius having a eureka moment alone in the lab. Nor is it merely a question of building on precedent, of standing on the shoulders of giants, in Newton’s famous phrase.
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.