On Failure

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I've been thinking about failure a lot. My career has some doozies in its wake. I've heard people speak about failures at conferences. The current trend is to tell people failures are okay because they learn from them. I've seen some suggest extremes like encouraging failure. Back in the late 80s, "failure was not an option" and other similar platitudes ruled the business rags. People wanted to be Gordon Geko so bad. I think the discourse is starting to swing back toward allowing no failures. Certainly political discourse is.

Why must everything be either or? This black and white view of the world is killing us all. Failure is relative. Mistakes are not synonymous with failure. So stop equating the two. The "fail" internet meme is really a series of photos and videos pointing out mistakes. Failure is not achieving a set goal. Failure is not falling down in public; that's just embarrassment.

I'm one of those guys who is really hard on myself, more than anybody else will ever be, and I know it. I look back on many past failures and wince at the outcome. Most of my failures were of my own design. That's the hard part to swallow. I believe failure evolves from a series of mistakes. Mistakes are warnings that tell us we are on the path to failure. What we learn from failure is to pay attention to mistakes and learn from them as we go along.

I've failed at start-ups, I've failed with friendships, and I've failed with family. The most important lesson I've learned is that failure is sometimes a choice you make at the time. You may choose to walk away from a situation and cut your losses. For instance, I walked away from a start-up because it was killing me. I over committed and couldn't support my family. I burned bridges and have regret, but I also learned important lessons about what is important to me and my family. I'm not cut out to be self-employed. This was pressure I put on myself because I came from a family who ran a small business. I'm much happier in life now that I've let that go.

Failure is what you make it. You can wallow in it and not get past it. You can leave bad situations and use them to learn and grow. You can give up on a project when you hit diminishing returns to save time, money, and resources. All of these scenarios are forgivable and understandable. Allowing failure in your life can alleviate all sorts of pressure and help you move on to more important things. You just have to give yourself permission to fail here and there.

Another way at looking at it is to reframe what you consider failing to be. For example, if you are in a bad, unhealthy relationship and you break it off, is that a failure or is it you protecting yourself? If you pick the latter, you're growing as a person.

Remember, mistakes are not failure. Failure is relative. And "fail" is a verb. For the love of all that's holy, if you want to mock a mistake, put "oops" on the photo.

Related articles

• Of Failure and Learning… (anounceofeternity.wordpress.com)
• Embrace failure (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)
• The Right Way to Respond to Failure (blogs.hbr.org)

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