I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.

As I have mentioned many times, I love proverbs,

aphorisms, zen, coons, paradoxes, fables.

I love any single line where a big idea is succinctly expressed,

or any kind of teaching story.

I try to write them myself and I collect any memorable ones that I find.

Because of this passion, I have a gigantic document called One Sentence aphorisms

where I collect my favorites.

Of my entire collection, One Proverb is Among My Favorites.

I write a lot about it in my book Better Than Before,

which is all about how to make or break habits.

I quote the proverb at the beginning of the chapter on the strategy of safeguards,

which is about how we can take steps in our lives to safeguard our habits,

to make it easier to stick to them and harder to break them,

and how we can learn from our mistakes to do a better job

keeping our habits in the future.

And I love this proverb, a stumble may prevent a fall.

It's so comforting.

Yes, I stumbled, I screwed up.

Yes, I didn't do something the way I'd hoped I'd do it,

but my mistake can help me.

I can learn from it.

...