We’re so often told that if we follow our dreams we will succeed, we will get there. Just a bit of perseverance and, hey presto, you will live happily ever after. What they don’t mention is failure. As someone who has much more experience of failure than success, failure is what you encounter most.
Stories tell us that we must overcome huge obstacles and slay the dragon if we are to fully realise the benefit of success. After overcoming his demons, the hero succeeds.
But if Batman were to invite the Joker over, have a polite conversation about the problems in the world, settle down on the sofa with a beer and pizza and watch their favorite TV soap together. No no problem to solve, no conflict, no obstacle to overcome, no failure, no story.
Failure is an essential and inevitable part of our real-life stories, we’re just not quite as good at overcoming them as our heroes.
It’s impossible to function without risk and failure unless you’ve lived so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, In which case, honestly, you’ve already failed by default.
The moment we step over into uncharted territory, to try to find a solution to a problem, we are already in an area of uncertainty and doubt and the risk of failure increases. Often though, rather than risking failure, we balance it against complacency and inaction, which requires less effort, and we settle for no reward and just another little chip to our feeling of self-worth. We get used to that feeling and our brains trace the same path again and again. It becomes normal.
Of course, we want success, who wouldn’t. But success (defined by Earl Nightingale as: The progressive realization of a Worthy Ideal) requires more effort than the status quo, particularly when we encounter a dragon, so we save our energy and we get eaten by the monster.
Every story I’ve ever read tells the same story; [from Story Brand] A character (you or me), has a problem (something we are compelled or want to do), and meets a guide (the catalyst, the secret sauce), who gives them a plan (a route map or strategy), and calls them to action (the actual doing of it (rather than thinking about it)), that ends in success (😊), and helps them avoid failure (phew).
However, you can’t avoid failure of some kind, all you can do is turn it into something useful.
Good stories are relevant to our lives because they follow this universal pattern. We identify with the hero who is imperfect and flawed. That’s us. The probability of failure is real and always looming over the hero (you and me).
We seem to learn less from success though than we do from failure (at least if we’re willing to take the lessons from failure which we’re often not willing to do!). Success is the reward of overcoming failure. Failure allows us to learn where our boundaries and assumptions lie. If you know where the boundaries are, you can decide if you wish to step over the line and into uncertainty.
Surely also, failure, trial, and error are how we learn. It’s how we take our first steps, how we learn to speak, how we learn to ride a bike or drive a car. Don’t forget, the first pancake is always a failure, the second is usually delicious.
We’re not born with a manual that tells us how to do things. We just have a go! And we fail many times, but in the end, we succeed.
Once we learn to socialize, we learn to fear failure for the rejection it may carry with it and we often stop trying.
[In her book Mindset, Carol Dweck talks about seemingly very “bright” or talented people who have a closed mindset and don’t step out of their comfort zone and risk failure. “talent can also be a crutch]
The fear of failure and the consequent fear of rejection, or loss of reputation often seem to motivate us more than the promise of success. We balance it out.
But what if you were to embrace failure and rejection as a goal?
What if you were to actively go out looking for and asking for things that you knew would be rejected.
Are there hidden opportunities in failure and confronting rejection? It seems it all depends on how you view (and use) failure.
In his website, RejectionTherapy.com, Jia Jiang suggests that we do just that. Embrace failure, make it a mission to seek out the things that cause us to feel rejection and failure.
He set himself the task of doing 100 things in 100 days that you would normally avoid. Like asking to borrow $100 from a stranger, requesting a “burger refill”, asking for an Olympic symbol Doughnut at Dunkin Doughnuts and many, many more.
What he found is that once you begin to confront your own failure demons in this small way, you learn to overcome the pain of rejection and your fear of a loss of reputation.
Failure, he says, is an intricate part of following your dream, as is finding a way to achieve that goal.
Some of the great heroes of the twentieth century like Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Gandhi succeeded in spite of massive failures and false starts.
The author of Eat, Love, Pray, Elizabeth Gilbert, has a slightly different take on failure. She says that in order to survive rejection (I guess writers have to cope with a lot of rejections) we must find our “home”, our safe place. For her, that safe place was writing. She built her safe place on what she loves to do, writing, which she knew she could always go back to.
Somewhere between great failure and great success is your “home”, which you should go back to.
I don’t find that very helpful. When you fail or are rejected, the thing you doubt most is your “home” or your self-worth in doing what you’re doing. I think overcoming failure has more to do with not treating it as a failure, but using it as a stepping stone from which you learn to move on to the next stage. Isn’t that how scientific research works (and all creative thinking)? You need to experiment, be open, try out and take a lot of blind alleys before you find a theory that satisfies the questions.
Safe Place or home feels more like retreating from the world. What you really need to do is go at it again from a different angle.
Anyway, failure is relative to expectations, relative to your attitude to it. There are only two things we are really in control of; Attitude and Effort. Attitude is how we approach a problem, the mindset we have and Effort is the amount of resources we put towards solving the problem. It probably says more about you if you persist even if you fail.
Without any doubt, failure is a key component in creative thinking. Creative thinking involves becoming exposed to something that involves a risk of failure. If we didn’t cross over the line of our assumptions we wouldn’t create anything new and everything would remain the same.
All creative problem-solving starts with a question. A question is based on doubt and uncertainty. Without doubt and uncertainty, there is no progress and no learning. We would be content with the knowledge we have and nothing would change. So, not only are we doubters but we also restlessly seek novelty and stimulation.
Uncertainty is a fundamental principle of science and of all types of creative thinking.
Richard Feynman, one of my scientific heroes said,
“nothing is ever certain or proved beyond doubt. You investigate for curiosity, because it is unknown, not because you know the answer…It’s not that you are finding out the truth, but that you are finding out that this or that is more or less likely”
“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live with not knowing than to have answers that may be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain…In order to make progress, one must leave the door of the unknown ajar.”
That’s why we should embrace ignorance, failure, and doubt.
