When we fail

The thought of failure triggers intense emotional responses in most people. As a society, we fear failure, avoid it at just about any cost, and even scorn people whose failures we learn about, branding them “losers” in a bid to make ourselves feel safer and less likely to end up in the same boat. But this is a very simplistic way of thinking about life and success. Life is more complex than that, and failure is not all bad, in spite of how it might seem at the time. So much depends on how we respond to disappointment and loss.

Just in case you’re wondering, this is not going to be a Pollyanna conversation. I’ve suffered failure, and I know exactly how painful it can be. If you’re currently suffering the emotional pain of having failed at something, I’m certainly not going to insult you by telling you to look on the bright side. In fact, I’d encourage you to fully feel your loss, to acknowledge your disappointment, and to honour your true emotions.

Living fully means feeling pain sometimes.

But once you’ve acknowledged your loss, it’s time to think about how you’re going to respond to it. And that’s what I want to talk about today, because failure shows up again and again in the life stories of high achievers, and it's likely there’s something valuable you can glean from the experience.

One of the first things you should do when you feel like you’ve failed is to ask yourself “have I really failed?” because often what we call failure is really an inability to live up to unrealistically high standards. Getting a silver or bronze medal at the Olympic games, for instance, is not my definition of failure. Nor is getting a distinction instead of a high distinction on an exam, or being cast in a smaller than hoped for role in an artistic production. These may be legitimate disappointments if you’ve set your sights higher, but they’re hardly failures, because much has still been achieved.

Be careful not to label yourself a failure because of harsh, inflexible standards. Celebrate your successes, even if they’re not quite as stellar as you might have hoped.

In spite of the negative view of failure propagated in our society, the lives of high achievers tell a starkly different story about the role of failure in our lives. Although individual stories vary in their details, the themes are remarkably consistent. Let’s look at a few of those themes here.

Failure as the solution to a future problem

Australian Olympic gold medallist Lauren Burns suffered a painful defeat at the 1999 World Championships in Canada. Planning to retire in the not-too-distant future, she felt that 1999 was “her time”, her last chance to win a World Championship competition. She found herself fighting the then world champion, Chi Shu Ju from Chinese Taipei, in the second round. After a toughly contested fight, victory was awarded to Chi Shu Ju, and Lauren walked away from the World Championship with no medal and no ranking. Bitterly disappointed, Lauren video recorded the rest of Chi’s fights on that day so she could analyse where she’d been outdone. As fate would have it, Lauren’s first fight at the 2000 Olympics was against Chi Shu Ju. Needless to say, Lauren won that fight, and she credits her defeat at the World Championships with her subsequent Olympics win… “Looking back I know that if I hadn’t lost to her at the World Championships I probably wouldn’t have had the tactical skills to beat her at the Olympics.”*

Stories like this are a recurring theme in the success literature. Sometimes, a defeat today paves the way for tomorrow’s success by providing just the learning opportunity that will make the difference in the future.

Failure as a trigger for a new life direction

Anne McCullagh Rennie is an award-winning, bestselling novelist. But she didn’t start out in life hoping to be an author. In fact, she dreamed of success on the world stage as an opera singer. Anne had a number of opportunities to build a career as an opera singer, both in England and, later, after she emigrated to Australia. But she was unable to turn her talent and opportunities into a successful career. She blames this failure primarily on personal failings, noting that she was naïve and lacking in important social and political skills. Anne learnt from that failure and overcame the personal weaknesses that caused her operatic demise. Yet she also sees her singing failure as an important re-routing experience… “When I look at the success I’ve had in the writing world, obviously I wasn’t meant to be an opera singer. I think of failure being the kink in the road that nudges you along the path you were meant to take.”**

Whether or not you share Anne’s belief that there’s a right path for each of us, the point in this theme – of a new and more fruitful direction emerging following a painful failure – shows up frequently in the life stories of high achievers. Some of us take the straight path, others do not. All of us can eventually arrive in Rome…or some other fabulous city!

Failure as a valuable learning experience

Entrepreneur and Dragon’s Den star, Peter Jones, had a thriving business building and maintaining computers by the time he was in his early twenties. He had everything he’d always wanted – a successful business, marriage and children, and plenty of money, not to mention his dream car. Yet in his mid 20s he lost everything. His business collapsed and a couple of years later his marriage failed. He hit rock bottom and had to start again from scratch. He said “I’d made many stupid mistakes. I’d been doing so well that I’d failed to protect the business. I hadn’t bothered doing credit checks or insuring the business adequately…But even then, when I was right at the bottom, because I’d learned from my mistakes, I still had enough confidence and self-belief to give me the strength and the ability to turn the situation round. I’d created a successful business once: I could do it again.”***

Having learned from his failure, Peter has now built not just a business, but a business empire. He used failure as a springboard to even greater success.

Conclusion

Failure is painful, and let’s not pretend otherwise. But it’s not the end of the story unless you also give up. It may well mean that one door has permanently closed. That's a loss, but there will be other open doors for you to walk through in the future, even if you can't see those doors yet.

Alternatively, the door may not have permanently closed at all. Perhaps you just need more skill or experience to successfully achieve your original goal.

Your challenge, if you’ve failed, is not to settle for the “loser” interpretation that our society promotes, but to look for the silver lining and turn things around.

If you’re suffering at the moment, take heart. You’re in excellent company. Many high achievers have achieved their greatest successes following painful failures. And if someone else can do it, so can you.

* Beaumont, D. (2007). Secrets of inspiring women exposed, pp. 61-78. Australia: Dream Express Publishing.
** Robson, T. (2010). Failure is an option: How setbacks breed success, pp. 139-149. Australia: ABC Books.
*** Jones, P. 2007). Tycoon. London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.