Failure

Failure. It’s a word we’ve been conditioned to dislike. It makes us uncomfortable. For some it can be the source of sleepless nights and hours of therapy. Yet, failure is the doorway to progress. If we never fail we cannot grow, move forward, improve, and eventually excel.

It’s a big topic. And it tends to draw mostly negative connotations but as noted, without failure there are no successes. Ask every single successful person if they’ve ever failed at something. The answer is always YES. Its not the failure that will hold us back, its how we respond to failing.

Let’s read that again: Its not the failure that will hold us back, its our response to the failure.

That’s the really hard part. Our natural response is to hide the failure. Cover it up. Put it into the back of the closet. If it’s a terrible meal you made, you throw it out. And tell no one!

Those of us who are creators are told “only put your best work out into the world, never show your failures”. That’s terrible advice. First, it creates this fake persona of someone who produces only high level work all the time. Next, its sets up these ridiculously high expectations of our followers. And last it forces us to be unauthentic and can end up alienating our followers who, for the most part are human and all have experienced failure. I can’t relate to someone who is supremely perfect all the time because I am intimately flawed and fail more often than I succeed.

Think about when you scroll your newsfeed. Pretty picture, cute dog, funny cat, tasty dinner hack….oh wait what Mr. Famous was caught speeding? Well, I gotta read that!! Its okay you can laugh, we all do it. We are attracted by the sensational and the failures of others. There’s a ton of “fail” videos out there that draw in millions of viewers daily. Why? Because when we watch someone else fail it makes us feel better (and sometimes superior) knowing that we are not the only imperfect creature on the planet.

Flip that around. Now you, as a creative, share your latest failure and also share what you learned. Because failure is learning. Failure is progress. Failure is necessary for success.

I failed recently. My default is to take full responsibility regardless of whether or not its warranted. I am part of a team, but I still feel personally responsible. I’m not sure what failed, yet. The plan unfolded the same as the previous year. But we failed to consider that this is a new year, with new challenges. It stinks. But I have to move forward. The alternative is to stay here and wallow in failure. And that’s something I finally gave up on because I now understand that rumination leads nowhere useful.

My proposal to the group will be to start planning for the next one. Forward. Can’t change the past.

Yes, failure is painful, but progress requires it.

So, keep failing, keep getting up, keep trying again. Progress not perfection.