It is a dirty word, and we avoid it like the plague. JFK famously said, “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” However, failure is superior to the opposite, hastily decided, inevitable, and the fertilizer of success.
The Alternative?
An evil man died and found himself in a luxurious casino, where he won every game of chance and was surrounded by beautiful women who could not resist his charm. He enjoyed it for a while, then complained to the concierge that he was frustrated: heaven was fun but lacked excitement. The concierge smirked and replied, “What makes you think you are in heaven?” That was Rod Serling’s cue to mention the infinite misery of an eternity without failure in the Twilight Zone.
Prematurely Decided?
Governor Bill Clinton delivered one of the worst speeches ever at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Pundits declared his political career was over. Four years later, he joked about that infamous speech while accepting his party’s presidential nomination. Secretary of State Marco Rubio may be experiencing a similar renaissance after his disastrous 2016 presidential campaign.
If victory always went to the winners of early battles, the Allies would have lost World War II. History wrote the final chapter long after the failed defenses of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France.
You know the famous saying, “You never fail until you stop trying.” As a result, you can forestall failure indefinitely by persisting. I am not encouraging senseless effort; there are valid reasons to quit.
Inevitable
Success is often bound together with failure.
Home run sluggers accept strikeouts as a consequence of swinging for the fences. The Great Bambino, Babe Ruth, was the home run and strikeout king.
Arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan acknowledges that misses come with makes. Along with his highlight-reel dunks and six championship rings, MJ missed more than 9,000 shots, lost almost 300 games, and missed the game-winning shot 26 times.
Successful sales professionals will tell you that they hear a lot more “no’s” than “yes,” and the ability to accept them and remain persistent is the key to their success.
Fertilizer of Success?
You cannot master good technique unless you are willing to use poor technique. My longtime readers know I had to write a lot of cringeworthy prose to get where I am today. If you are going to do anything new and challenging, you must expect numerous opportunities for improvement. Thomas Edison would never have discovered the right filament for the light bulb unless he was willing to persevere through thousands of unsuccessful attempts.
Self-help gurus proclaim you should “fail fast,” learn from the experience, and move forward. There is also, “We learn more from our failures than our successes” (though there is evidence to the contrary). I am not so infatuated with rushing into failure, but I realize that failure is a consequence of necessary experimentation and a source of learning. Perhaps we should refine the definition of failure from its all-or-nothing connotation to “not achieving the intended objective, but a stepping stone.”
It is a matter of perspective. Thomas Edison viewed every attempt positively, regardless of the outcome. He bragged that he “knew several thousand things that won’t work.” Unless you do it again (expecting a different result), the failure removes an unworthy option from your alternatives. You must extract the lesson from each failure and use it to find the solution.
When weightlifting, I always aspire to complete the set by lifting the specified weight for the specified number of repetitions. However, muscle growth requires exertion to the point of failure. It is the perfect irony; the only way to improve is to fail.
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It may be as simple as viewing today’s failure as a step toward tomorrow’s success.
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