I recently had a conversation with my 8-year-old son about how to deal with failure – and then had an almost identical conversation with a 37-year-old friend about the same thing. It made me realize that, for many of us, our attitude toward failure doesn’t change much as we get older – we don’t like failing as children, and we don’t learn to like it any better as we get older. And yet, failure is one of life’s very few constant companions, so figuring out how to think about it productively would be rather helpful.
So in case you’ve ever gotten angry about failing at something, or been afraid to try something because you might fail at it, here’s what I’d like you to know.
First off, failure is completely normal. Not only that, but it’s actually more common than success. There is no better proof of the truth of that than watching children grow up. They fail constantly – to walk well, to run without looking like drunks, to write letters and words that anyone else knows how to read, to ride bicycles without training wheels. Children fail all the time, and we don’t think anything of it. It’s completely normal. It’s simply a part of growing up and getting better at things. In fact, when we’re talking to our children we don’t even call it failure – we call it learning.
Which is the second important point to remember – failure is learning. We would never say to a 1st-grader, “Well, you failed to add those two numbers together correctly, so you must not be very good at addition.” We accept failure in children as part of the process of growing and getting better at things.
Right up until the moment that we don’t.
To be honest, I don’t really know why that happens. But somewhere along the way, we stop talking about failure as a natural part of learning, and we start talking and thinking about it as something problematic or undesirable. Don’t mistake me – I’m not expecting you to like failing at things. I don’t like failing at things. But when you realize that failure is simply a part of the process of getting better and smarter, then it’s a lot easier to accept it when it does happen.
For example, I am married to one person, but I have dated more people than that. Therefore, I have failed at more relationships than I have been successful at. I have one successful career, but I have had dozens of jobs in my life – so professionally, you could say that I have been more unsuccessful than successful. In my current successful business, I have tried more ideas that didn’t work than ones that did. Throughout my life, my experiences – like yours, I’m certain – have been more failure than success. In fact, it’s because of those various failures that I’ve found the successes I currently enjoy.
And that leads us to the most important thing that failure is NOT. Failure is NOT a reflection of your self-worth. Failure is an expenditure of time and resources in exchange for knowledge. Even our stupidest failures, the ones that we look back on with regret, are opportunities for us to say, “Well, that was a dumb thing to do, but at least I know enough now to not make the same mistake again.” The problem is when we start to say, “Well, that thing I tried failed, so I must be a stupid or unworthy person.” That’s when the fear of failure starts to prevent us from trying things that might lead to success – after all, if we don’t try, we can’t fail, right? But if we can’t fail, we also can’t succeed. Which means our fear of failure means we’re less likely to feel successful, which then makes us feel even more like a failure, and down and down we go.
So as often as you can, remind yourself that failure is a natural part of the process of learning and growing and getting better at things. When failure happens, take the opportunity to analyze the failure and see what you can learn from it. And please, please, PLEASE don’t allow the failure of a thing you tried influence your opinion about who you are or have the potential to become. That’s something I hope to be able to help teach my kids as they grow up, and it’s something I hope not to forget the next time I make a stupid mistake or try something that doesn’t work.
