“Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” ― Coco Chanel
It’s often observed that the path to success is paved with failure. Yet, it’s easy to treat failure as catastrophic.
My Story
At the end of grade one, I couldn’t read. My teacher thought that I should repeat grade one. My parents, fearing that I would fall horrendously behind decided to take me out of school and to homeschool me. My mother, who was partially educated as a teacher, felt that hands on, one-on-one attention would set me straight.
For months, I struggled. Bribes were offered – chocolate for every (very basic) book I struggled to read. Strict rules were imposed – I had to read before I could go play outside. Concerned looks were tossed toward me in the evening discussions between my parents, each with an impending sense of future dread. The promise of my future unravelled before my parents’ eyes. Would I ever read?
I started to believe the unspoken stories of my academic failures, my intellectual limitations, the shrinking career choices that would be made available to me.
Before the end of second grade, while my reading improved very little, I thought I had learned a lot about myself. I was stupid. Even long after I learned to read, finished highschool, and completed a Master’s degree in English literature, I still felt stupid.
Sadly, internalizing negative beliefs we think have been confirmed by our experience is common. When we fail at school, we think we’re stupid. When we let down our friends, we think that we’re a bad person. When we try something again and again, and just can’t get it right, we think we are not the sort of people cut out for it.
Our Beliefs and Shame Tame Us
Once we embody these beliefs, our future is limited because we stop trying. I’ve read that young elephants are tamed by simply tying one of their legs to a strong post with a rope. At first, they try to fight against it and fail to escape. But after a short period, they surrender to the rope. Even as they grow into more powerful adult elephants, an easily-breakable rope holds them because they still believe it can. Their young experiences change their beliefs forever.
When we try something again and again, and just can’t get it right, we think we are not the sort of people cut out for it.
Like elephants, it’s easy to let early failures become our future.
Brene Brown’s differentiation between guilt and shame offer useful parallels here. Brown defines guilt as “I did something bad.” It’s an emotional indicator motivating you to correct something you did or didn’t do. Shame is “I am bad” – the belief, accompanied by enormously negative feelings, that you are not a good person. Brown would argue, and I think that we’d agree, that only one of these definitions is useful.
Like guilt and shame, our interpretation of failure can be useful or detrimental. If we take failure as “I am a failure” or “I can’t succeed,” then we become the elephant, tied to old limited beliefs. If we take failure as “I’ve found something that doesn’t work” we open up to the possibility of continued learning and limitless success. Almost all successful people subscribe to the later definition; they see failure, as Albert Einstein would say it, as “success in progress.”
How to Fail
Rewiring our impulsive interpretations of failure toward success is itself a practice of trial and error (one I frequently fail at). But through intentional and cultivated behaviours, we can design a life where failure is part of it, but not its conclusion.
There are some techniques and supports that make this possible.
- Review your success and failures regularly. I prefer to do this through journaling or a weekly review. I find that the exploration of failure through free-writing journaling clears my mind enough to find otherwise impossible solutions.
However, in my experience, the easiest journaling technique, with the most bang for your buck is structured. In this case, ask yourself three questions:- What are my goals? This helps you see the future.
- What is not going as planned? This is to identify roadblocks and missteps.
- What am I going to do differently in the future? Commit to trying new things to overcome roadblocks and missteps.
- Meditation. Failure is often ego crushing and demoralizing. I find that meditation helps me accept things as they are, including who I am at this moment. Failure is part of what is. Often when we accept it, we can see it more objectively and this leads to solutions. Meditation also helps me be easier on myself by extending the loving kindness first to myself. I’ve often seen myself in my meditations as a child who need the protection
- Stop pleasing the wrong people. I am a people pleaser, always have been. I’ve been learning to accept this part of me. As I do, I realize that the trick isn’t to stop people pleasing (although you can, and should, get more control over it). The trick is to carefully choose the right people to please. Some people aren’t worth pleasing; they’ll either never be pleased or they’ll only be pleased when you do what they want. These are the wrong people to please. Drop em’.
- Find Your Cheer Squad. Along the same lines as pleasing people, find those people that will cheer you on even when things are going badly. The truest test of friendship is not those friends who are with you when things are going well, but those who stick with you when things are going badly. If you’ve ever been to a football game, the cheer squad doesn’t just cheer when the team is doing well, they also cheer, if not more vivaciously, when things are going poorly. Find these people and make them your friends.
I hope these are helpful for you. As with anything, practicing something new takes time; seeing failure as a path towards success is, at first, a struggle. It’s only through continual self evaluation and the reapplication of one’s self to a future goal, that produces success. One day, I hope to automatically learn from failure and, unhesitantly, keep progressing towards success. Or perhaps, more optimistically, perhaps one day I will see neither success nor failure but a journey of self-discovery and accomplishment.
Till then, stay happy friends.
