Whatever happened to that famous saying, if at first you don’t succeed try and try again. Yet how afraid are we of failing? We do not even start on a new adventure because we do not want to fail.
Try for a different job? Oh no, can’t do that. Take a different route, cook a new meal, experiment with new seeds, learn to ride a motorbike, work out how to use e-mail. Never. Can’t do any of that.
If we do not have the courage to try out small things such as using a computer. How then can we even consider the courage it takes to leave one career and start something totally different? Or to learn Mandarin and work in China, or to volunteer to work in Rwanda.
What about the courage to start running for a marathon. Or add swimming and cycling to your running to try your hand at a triathlon. What about finding a new hobby such as paragliding, or wind surfing, or even just playing chess? How many of these activities make you tremble with fear?
Yet, for each one of these activities and challenges there are many tiny steps of trial and error that will get you there. You don’t need to immediately enter a marathon. You can run a few 5km races first. In fact you don’t even need to run, you can take part in walks. Try out little events and build up to the full one.
All it takes is for you to have the courage to fail once in a while. Take some time to learn to pronounce that Mandarin word, or learn to write a character. You will get it wrong many times because it is so different to your western language and alphabet. But what a wonderful feeling when you get it right because you know you have achieved something big.
Didn’t quite finish that first marathon? You will have learned from the experience. You will have learned that you didn’t drink enough, shouldn’t have run in new shoes, needed to take plasters to stop the chafing, a hat to keep yourself cool, more training and better nutrition. There will be many new lessons. And some of those lessons will extend further than your running. They will be life lessons that will help you in other areas of your life.
Regrettably we start off our learning life realizing that failure is bad for us. When we fail at school we are punished. We might be moved to another class, or even have to repeat the year. We certainly will not get the certificate that the person who came first got.
If we fail at school we will not be asked to make the final speech. We will not have our name on a plaque in the entrance. We will not play in the first team and we have no chance of attending a good University. Failing at the subject of school is not good for you.
Regrettably, the work environment is seldom any different. You don’t get promotion if you lose a big sale or a big customer. You are not encouraged to fail at anything. And the people who get promoted are usually the ones who have less failures.
With this kind of learning, it’s hardly surprising that we don’t try out new things or challenge ourselves to reach loftier goals. Failure is bad. Can’t do failure. So we don’t even try. Holding ourselves back because of fear of failure is the ultimate failure.
Jarrod@ Optimistic Journey
This is an interesting take on the subject of failure. There’s a learning experience in every loss or failure. I think that most aren’t open to learning something from failure. We’re usually beating ourselves up about it. If we open ourselves up to the lessons that come with failing we would discover more purpose in life.
March 26, 2010 at 11:24 pm
Will You Be a Fantastic Failure or Awesome Underachiever? « TheUniversityBlog
[...] Ririan – “All it takes is for you to have the courage to fail once in a while.” [...]
April 5, 2010 at 1:32 am
Joshua Noerr
Great article. It reminds me of a quote by Thomas Edison. When he was asked how he handled so much failure getting to a working light bulb, he said, “I didn’t fail 10,000 times. I found 10,000 successful ways not to make a light bulb!”
April 21, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Les Dunaway
Like many things, it matters what you call it. When you try a new steak sauce and it’s terrible, you don’t give up steak. When the tie that looked good in the store is REALLY ugly with your suit, you don’t throw away the suit.
Something that doesn’t work out is only failure if YOU say it is. So don’t! Look at it as an experiment that gave you valuable information. Analyze and understand that information; use it in the next experiment.
Oh and by the way, if you have the misfortune to find yourself in an organization that doesn’t understand and embrace these ideas, hit the road!
April 24, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Don Weyant
Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.” Whatever course you decide upon in your life, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong, you can’t do it and if they aren’t around we have a tendency to do it ourselves . There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. What is more important is o map out a course of action that works for us and follow it to an end requires courage. Trust you heart above all else!
May 12, 2010 at 2:36 pm
Neil
This is a great article. I work in a creative field and fear of failure has been the major roadblock in my progress. Within the next year I want to eliminate or drastically reduce my fear of failure. Actually in the last 3 months I’ve made great strides, and I think one year is adequate time to get to the point that I can learn from and be ok with failure.
October 3, 2010 at 9:51 pm