Hurdles along the Way.
The problem I had earlier in life was that I thought failure was a bad thing. I learned to look at failure as an undesirable outcome instead of realising that it was just a part of the process. The outcome will depend on how I deal with the overall process and failure is an important part of it.
If I choose to get upset or worked up by it or keep doing the same thing repeatedly in the hope that at some point it will work, then it would lead to an undesirable outcome, but if I can learn from it and do something different, the outcome may even be better than what I originally desired.
We learn about failure early in life. Kids race each other on the playground, are tested in school, and are given grades each year, quickly learning what it means to win or lose, pass or fail. Not winning tends to have a stigma around it, and can ultimately lead to labels like failure or loser.
Too many times, I allow external views to define my self-worth and thus am afraid of ridicule stemming from these unfair labels, which I even give to my friends and family. Through societal behaviour, we teach people to not be risk takers.
An important lesson to learn is that failure is not a bad thing. It’s all right if I fail. That life doesn’t end there. Many great people have failed many times before reaching where they are today. If they saw failure as an outcome, they wouldn’t have achieved half of what they were able to.
I’m not suggesting failure is something we should try to do, quite the opposite, naturally, but failure is a necessary part of life at times, and the best way to handle it is to learn from it.
I know that I have made more than my share of mistakes during my career, as well as in my personal life, and they’ve taught me valuable lessons, and some of the smartest people I know were able to take setbacks and turn them into positives.
The world is full of successful failures. Many of them had to overcome naysayers, setbacks and career disappointments to reach the top. They were tenacious and, like an old-fashioned alchemist, they turned their metal into gold. One of the most prominent successful failures that come to mind include:
Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star because his editor felt he lacked imagination and had no good ideas. He formed his first animation company in Kansas City in 1921 and made a deal with a distribution company in which he would ship them his cartoons in New York and get paid six months later.
Unsurprisingly, he was forced to dissolve his company because he could not pay his rent and was (reportedly) surviving on dog food. Needless to say, he went on to be nominated for 59 Academy Awards and is one of the greatest animators of our time.
Failure is an opportunity to learn. When we confuse our sense of self-value with success, we restrict our learning ability because our ego becomes another factor in this equation. Our ego tells us we succeeded because we’re so smart and great, or that we failed because we are a loser and can’t win anything.
Likewise, success can equally blind us from learning. Just like a failure, success is an external event and does not necessarily define us as a winner. Many entrepreneurs who have experienced success make the mistake of believing they did it all on their own, forgetting the team and support that helped them achieve their goals.
Of course, they made good decisions at the right time, worked hard and achieved success, but in almost all cases, other team members assisted in the win.
So, you see, it’s rare that successful people have a smooth run. I could argue that one of the prerequisites for success is some hurdles along the way that help us build strength, resilience and intestinal fortitude.
Be ruthlessly honest with ourselves and others. Denial is our worst enemy. Strive to find flaws in our ideas or processes and eliminate them. We are only doomed to repeatedly fail if we choose not to learn from our past mistakes. Then when we do achieve the success we have been seeking, it will be all the more enjoyable.