How to Never Fail Again
The Conventional Idea of Failure
I find one of the most amazing things about being alive today is that we get to benefit from the knowledge of all the people that came before us. Just by picking up a book, searching the internet, or taking a class, I can learn how to do basically anything anyone else has ever figured out. That’s astonishing. I can leapfrog off the time others have invested into figuring stuff out without having to invest that amount of time or effort myself. I get the CliffsNotes.
Though, One downside of this incredible and easily-consumed collective knowledge-base is that it also contains inaccurate information. There are unhelpful ways to conceive of things that the people who came before us developed on their own, or simply inherited from others. I think that one of the most pernicious and stifling inaccuracies that we’ve inherited is the conventional idea of failure.
Lemme clarify something real quick. There are two types of failures: there’s the failure that occurs when a tool or machine doesn’t perform the function it was designed for (like a miscut key failing to unlock a door), and then there’s the misnomer that is frequently used to describe an outcome of our actions that we didn’t want (i.e., a mistake). The first example is an accurate description and non-personal, the second is a misunderstanding. This post is about clearing up the misunderstanding in the second example.
Underneath the scary facade of “failure” is something simple and benign. It’s a valuable bit of information we call a “mistake.” Mistakes are like stem-cells for learning, but when we contaminate them with the heavy story of a “failure,” we mistakenly turn a gift into a weapon.
Hoo boy. I smell a tedious semantics conversation coming. -Bob from Accounting
Hey?! Semantics are important, Bob. The ways that we conceive of things dictate what we do with them. I mean, think about how it feels when you try something that doesn’t go how you hoped and you say that you made a “mistake.” Now think about how it feels when you tell yourself that what you did was a “failure.”
For me, a mistake is just a “Whoops! Lemme try that again” situation, but a failure is scary. A failure makes it personal and leads me to feel that I did something kind of shameful. Something I want to hide and not talk about. Something I want to sweep under the rug and pretend isn’t there. Can I go back at some point and clean up what I hid under the rug? Sure, but wouldn’t it be easier to not create something I want to put there in the first place?
When we call a mistake a “failure,” we’re taking a simple bit of feedback on how the Universe functions and turning it into a judgment of our worth and abilities. We take it personally.
Ok, stay with me for a minute, but everything in the universe is perfect.
Alright, I didn’t just turn into Pollyanna, and, I am 100% certain that you could generate a long list of all the imperfect things you’ve seen and heard about in the world. But it’s important to distinguish between what’s perfect and what’s preferred.
Not everything that occurs in nature or that humans create is preferred, but everything that occurs does so according to an entirely consistent and identifiable structure or set of “rules.” That fact is what makes science possible.
Nothing occurs in this universe unless the exact, specific, and required conditions for it are present. You’ll never put water in your gas tank and have it combust like gasoline. You’ll never mix eggs, flour, water, and sugar together and get dynamite. You’ll never be making S’Mores and accidentally create an iPhone. In other words, you’ll never get the outcome you’re after unless you start with the necessary ingredients.
You might not always like what is produced, but the functioning of physics and the universe as a whole are flawless. So what we call “successes” and ”failures” are just the universe spitting out perfect feedback on what the ingredients that we’ve used produce. If you didn’t get what you wanted the first time, you can try again until the feedback says “That’s it! That’s the recipe you were looking for.”
“Failure” is just not knowing a better method at the time, and unless you stop and never try again, that outcome is temporary. Mistakes happen frequently, but failures only come into our experience when we imagine them for ourselves.
Whoa whoa whoa, did you just say that my failures are imaginary?! -Bob from Accounting
Yes. Absolutely. Failure is a mental state and a subjective judgment, not an external or objective reality. You have to ignore context in order to think you see failure, and that’s easy to do because most of us were never taught to think contextually. But if we zoom out a bit, the noodly details we can get lost in create a pattern that shows a continuum. And when we understand patterns, we can find the underlying universal “rule” or “law” that’s operating invisibly behind the scenes.
Graph Axis: Expected or desired outcome + time
That’s a lot of bumps in the road, huh? But did you notice the upward trend? I think it’s safe to say that an advanced “failure” is considerably more impressive and empowered than a rudimentary “success.” They’re both just markers on the road that show how far you’ve come.
If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning. And if you’re not learning and growing, what’s the point of any of this?
If you’re not making a mistake, it’s a mistake. -Miles Davis
“Successes” and “failures” are inseparable aspects of the same process. They’re like the inside and the outside of a container — two aspects of the same thing that can’t exist without the other.
Without ups and downs, there’s no movement. And without movement, there’s no progress — it would all just be a straight line of nothing.
Graph Axis: Expected or desired outcome + time
This next graph might be how we wished it all worked and how things appear in movies and on social media, but it’s a complete fiction. No matter how much we think we see this smooth “up-up, and away!” trajectory in other people’s lives, it simply doesn’t exist.
Graph Axis: Expected or desired outcome + time
That graph reminds me of bands who have been writing music and playing shows for a decade that suddenly win a “Best New Band” award. The name of the award makes it sound like they just decided to start a band a few days ago and then rocketed straight to success and critical acclaim. But there were countless ups and downs that happened “behind the scenes” before a wider audience became aware of them. Then it looks like they just popped out of nowhere.
Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable
The more comfortable we are with the “Oops!” / “I did it!” cycle, the more empowered we are to be bold and courageous with what we try and what we achieve. The errand of being human is not to eliminate the ups and downs, but to accept reality and become resilient. Then we can focus on how steep the incline of our trajectory is.
Graph Axis: Mastery of chosen areas of focus + time
Graph Axis: Mastery of chosen areas of focus + time
The overall evolution is much greater for those who are able to roll with the punches courageously. But when we allow our fears to stop us, where we wind up isn’t anywhere close to our full potential. This approach to living is the recipe that produces regrets.
Feeling the need to be perfect doesn’t make you perfect; it just makes you paralyzed. So let go of that because you’re not going to be perfect. And if you’re very lucky you’ll learn to be yourself. -David Sedaris
How to get rid of a failure
So, what do you think of all of this? That’s a lot of noodly little nuanced bits of information that we covered.
I mean, it makes sense. I can definitely see why you get so pedantic sometimes. -Bob from Accounting
Eh, tomato tomato. You can call it “pedantic,” but I call it being intentional. Plus, language is just really fascinating. It enables us to describe things and share ideas, but sometimes the tool that we pull from our linguistic toolshed isn’t the most accurate or well-honed.
I’ll leave you with one more thought and a cute illustration. If you ever find yourself being imposed upon by a “failure” and want it to go away, just feed it perspective.
When we bring perspective to the table, failures are revealed to just be simple mistakes. What we thought was a scary ball of broken glass and nails becomes as soft and harmless as a cotton ball. That isn’t to say that mistakes aren’t frustrating sometimes, but the discomfort of frustration can be dealt with much easier than the self-imposed or co-sponsored burden of failure.
The truth is, every moment is a new opportunity to create a different outcome. We embody and become whatever we do consistently. If we give up on our ambitions consistently, we’ll become a self-fulfilling prophecy of “I can’t do that,” with no shortage of examples to “prove” that we’re right. But if we keep trying, learning, and adjusting, we’ll become a self-fulfilling prophecy of “I am capable of anything I set my mind to and work hard at.”
That isn’t a Pollyanna platitude, it’s a reality.
Life is really challenging for all of us, and that’s what makes it worth living. No one is immune from the “success” / “failure” dichotomy, some have just learned to navigate it with greater intention and fluidity than others.
We can all learn to do this because life is about experimenting and progressing through practice, not starting with our full potential already realized from the beginning. Now get out there and make some useful mistakes. You got this.
