Here are a few axioms you'll never hear passed around outside of our borders...

"To have success, you need to fail."

"Failure is a part of success."

"In order to have success, you must fail."

Little motivational quotes from the poster on your boss' wall that get into your psyche. But if we're honest with ourselves, these little sayings sometimes help us forgive ourselves for our failings in business, at work, for our kids screw ups.

They've been part of our lives since childhood. From the kind teacher who patted us on the back when we got our first bad grade, to the parent who gave us a hug and told us not to worry about the missed touchdown. "It's how we learn," they say.

But I posit that maybe these axioms, this attitude toward failure that is so prevalent in Americans' version of success, is because of the abundance of resources we have to waste.

If resources become more scarce, failure may no longer be as celebrated.

Anecdotally, I can attest that my European peers do not have such a rosy view of failure. To them it is mixed with feelings of humiliation and shame. A deep sense of letting people down. While bankruptcy is used as a tool by many people in business in the States (the ethics around this deserve their own post), it is an embarrassment on a societal level that is unconscionable to many of my European colleagues.

Some might say it is because we are morally bereft. I say it is because we can. Because resources are still pretty available to the average American. Resources like space often manifested in the ownership of a small piece of land, like a yard. Something many people in more densely populated regions don't enjoy.

More land, less people, the longer it takes for help to reach you, the more responsibility lies with the land owner = gun rights.

Less land, more people, help is next door, the only thing you're hunting here is your enemy = no gun rights.

In fact, limited resources (as in land) may explain a lot of other differences. Densely populated Europe tends to be socialist because the need to deal with a lot more people. People are their resource. America has the luxury of love for individual rights because there are more natural resources (outside of people) to go around, more land to disappear on and make your own way. More isolation from society.

Other resources may include access to capital. It's relatively easy to get loans and buy property in the States. Car ownership is a good example. Car ownership in Europe is expensive and cumbersome. Most people living in European cities don't bother with it for good reason.

Business is another.

Yes, it's getting more difficult, but by comparison, it's still relatively easy to start a business in the U.S. of A. over many other countries. Which means a lot of people do it, and a lot of people can fail again and again without much consequences. Failure itself creates a market.

A big difference between me and my European husband, one that he and I have discussed (and sometimes screamed at each other), is my appetite for risk vs his insistence on perfection. My willingness to take risks gives him anxiety. Sometimes it even looks like sloppiness to him. While his pursuit of perfection is so over the top to me that I feel like it's wasteful of time and money.

This partially has to do with our personalities, but it also has to do with how we were nurtured. I was raised in an educational system that taught me that the worst failure is not trying at all. That's because the US has resources and needs boldness to keep up its innovation economy.

He grew up in a much more competitive system, more densely populated, and wrecked by war. Resources and opportunity are scarce and largely depend on who you know. There is no room for failure. Failure means you don't get the job in Germany or you can't support your family. The stakes are just too high. Perfection is the only way to set yourself apart.

So while we may argue about our personal differences, what my husband and I are really representing is the dichotomy of what success means from the standpoint of two systems.

I realize more and more that the picture is always bigger than you think.

"Aren't we lucky to live in a place that let's us fail?"