Ever notice how at the root of every excuse is a fear of failure in some shape or form? And how fear of failure is always about saving face somehow? We’ve all got some pretty big egos, don’t we … kind of like a bull in a china shop causing havoc in our lives whether we need it or not.
Failure is inevitable … so why do we avoid it?
We all hear all the time that failure is just feedback – a challenge, not an obstacle. We read books like The Little Train That Could. We’re bombarded with all kinds of quotes from successful people about failure. Regardless, it doesn’t always seem to quite sink in for most of us. Like our brains are conditioned to hear it but it doesn’t translate into action most of the time.
We all know that failure, as we define it, will happen at some point or another and yet we strive to avoid it at all costs. Even if it means digging ourselves deeper into failure by deciding not to act at all.
Last week I posted on Facebook (yes, I’m back by the way):
So, if you fail and learn something from it … is it truly a failure anymore? And knowing that … is it even possible to fail at all? Wouldn’t it be completely in your power to succeed every time?
I got into a brief discussion about it on Facebook and even more offline, but it all boils down to this: failure and success are essentially perceptions – if they are perceptions, are they even real?
Does failure even exist?
Everything we see in this world is filtered through our own experiences and values. From a young age, we’re taught what’s good and bad, wrong and right, and finally, who’s successful and who’s not. As children we’re taught, in the middle of contradicting advice, that failure is something to be labeled and avoided.
BUT if we don’t label anything as failure, then there’s no basis or reason to avoid it. It’s well within our power to choose not to label something or someone (you) as a failure.
I’m pretty much convinced that this duality of good/bad, right/wrong, and success/failure causes more harm than it’s worth, especially when people cling to them like their lives depend on it. Duality exists only if you let it – only if you chose to believe it exists.
Duality has its place, but most of us don’t know how to use it to improve ourselves as individuals. Too often, we use it to hold ourselves back or even bring other people down. We always have this mental duel going on between the shoulder angel and devil that’s commonly illustrated in cartoons. We’re all like undiagnosed, benign schizophrenics, if you ask me. But that’s another post for another day.
How to change ‘failure’ into ‘success’
The point is you can either make failure work for you or against you … or you can choose not to see it (whatever ‘it’ is) as failure at all. Society’s definition of failure and success is really just a suggestion, and a pervasive one at that. Some definitions are better than others and some benefit a lot of people. But most may or may not even apply to you.
If you encounter a situation that you or other people would normally label as failure, there are ways around it as you already know. You can learn from it and use that information to improve your technique or mindset – OR you can try something new all together.
As economists and psychologists have proven millions of times, the human psyche frequently defies all laws and rules people try to place on it … so why bind yourself to rules that don’t benefit you?
If you set a goal of making $10,000 in passive income this year and you only make $5,000 or even zero dollars, are you a failure? Only if you choose to see it that way. Only if you’re fixated on the number. Only if you’re fixated on the goal and not the journey. And only if you walk away not knowing what you did wrong.
Goals are tricky. They’re frequently necessary, BUT they sucker you into believing the end point is the most important thing, when in fact the way there is just as important as – if not more than – the end point. For example, if your goal is to drive from New York to California, the goal isn’t just California. The goal includes every strip of the road that gets you there. Every highway and every detour. Every flat tire and every empty gas tank. Because you can’t get to California without going through all that!
(That is, until they find a way to teleport people. Then at that point the journey includes getting on the transport pad, dematerializing, and materializing once again. But until you can say “Beam me up, Scotty,” you better get your butt into a car. Or a plane, if that’s your style. I digress.)
So if you get to California 80% of the way, then technically, you’ve succeeded 80%. Now you’ve got to find out how to get through the other 20% of the way.
A note on comparison and failure
Role models are great because they show you what’s possible and they often give you hints on how they’ve achieved it. A lot of successful and famous people say variations of the same thing I’ve just mentioned, but it can be hard for it to click in your mind because they seem so much more successful than you and they’ve been through so much more than you have.
How can you possibly bridge their successes to yours?
Well, you don’t. They aren’t you. There’s no One Path to ‘success’ and there’s no One Path to ‘failure.’ Comparing yourself to other people’s progress only strengthens the perception that you are a failure and that you’ll never amount to anything.
It’s easier said than done. But if you’re aware that you’re comparing yourself to others, you’re more likely to see them as inspiration and a source of advice that you to pick and choose from to apply to your life. You won’t see them as a reason why you suck or as someone to blindly compete against.
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Related posts:
- Why comparison can (sometimes) be a good thing
- Black and white only exists in the crevices of the human mind
- Can you still hear success?
- Obligatory post in which I babble about authenticity, imperfection, negativity, and then somehow throw Thanksgiving into the mix.
- Dealing with disenchantment and kicking the wrong illusions to the curb
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Well said Valerie, you certainly helped put things in perspective. Life is life – success and failure is what we make of it. I believe you are right on with failure being a fixation on a number. Usually people’s goals have money in there somewhere. But I’ve found that instead of focusing on money, instead focusing on people, that the money usually takes care of itself. it’s kind of funny that way.
Finally, I’ll echo what you said at the end – don’t compare yourself to others – I’ve done this before in the past. It becomes frustrating because you can never be somebody else. Everyone’s path is different.
Thanks, Jeremy! Good point on focusing on people and how to help them. I’d add helping without expecting anything in return. The irony is usually your efforts come back to you somehow – even if it’s not through the same channel you put it in. Such is the interconnected nature of the universe.
Lots of goodness.
It reminds me of Wooden. His point was to play your best. If you played your worst, but won, did you really win … and if you played, but lost, did you really lose?
I think the keys to always succeeding are giving your best, turning failure into feedback, and following your growth.
J.D. Meier´s last blog ..Information Overload is Not the Problem – It’s Filter Failure
Hi, JD. You know, there was always that one “easy A” class every semester that ends up in the back burner. I’d do next to nothing for it and still end up with an A, but I’ve gotten nothing from it. I do think that at times people need to pick their battles, but the point isn’t lost: just because you win at something doesn’t always mean anything if it was coincidental.
This was a really thought-provoking post!
I think failure does exist. Moreover, I think it is necessary. Failure serves as a motivator and an existential lesson to correct or modify our behavior. It is the pitfall we try to avoid in the hopes of staying on our intended path of purpose and ultimately achieving what we were put here to do. If there was no such thing as failure, what would be the incentive for change?
That said, I am completely onboard with you that failure does not mean the end of the world. We absolutely must change failure into success lest we get mired in the obstacles and lose sight of the joy of the journey. While attempting to avoid it can be fruitful, so is the fact that we can not avoid it entirely. The two coupled give us teach us about courage, faith, wisdom, and perseverance in such a way as to make our lives purposeful and rewarding.
ForNot´s last blog ..Jam On It
ForNot, there are many examples of people succeeding despite/because of failure so I’m not knocking that. I just see the opposite happening far more: people resist change because of the potential for failure. It definitely can go both ways though. I do think that if everything were easy, there’s no incentive for change or improvement.
I’m going to go on a tangent here. I’d venture to say that what we appreciate about failure is really something different all together. We just put the ‘failure’ label on it. As you know, anything that’s difficult to get has more value and people would want to invest more to get it. There’s a concept in economics about sunk cost. Whatever you put in, time/money/effort, is gone and you can’t get it back… therefore, it *shouldn’t* influence your future decisions. I understand it’s extreme and it isn’t always responsible NOT to consider sunk costs. However, I believe the feeling of failure comes in because people are attached to high sunk costs of obtaining something difficult (to them, anyway) to achieve. For example, I was reading this today: http://www.ratracetrap.com/the-rat-race-trap/the-sunk-cost-bias-mind-trap.html
I wrote a comment using the government and its handling of Medicare. Obviously Medicare is going bankrupt. And yet people keep clinging on to it because we’ve invested so much money and time into; if we let it go, it would be considered a failure just because of that. In this case, believing that Medicare would be a failure if we let go is a barrier to change. If we don’t see it as a failure, if we don’t simply see it as a sum of all the time and money invested in it, it would be much easier to learn from it and move on to something better.
Great Post Valerie!
I believe that failure happens when we totally give up on our goal. There comes a time, while shooting for success where we hit a point of stagnation and we stop progressing. It may seem at that point that we have failed and sometimes we put the goal off for a while.
I believe you made a great point when you asked the question, “if you fail and learn something from it … is it truly a failure anymore?”
I believe we can take the lessons we learned from our failures and rebirth them into success. The same thing happened to me a couple years ago, and I won’t go deep into that story or my comment will turn into a blog post on a blog post…LOL, Great post and keep up the great work!
Thanks, Jarrod! Good point about the stagnation. Your right — it’s not ALWAYS possible to push ourselves 24/7, so yes, there are those periods of stagnation to take into consideration. As for the long comments, that seems to be common around these parts… so I don’t really mind lol.