#16 - Failure
No one likes to fail. However, failure is a reality and a necessary part of improving. Today we’re going to talk about a few different ways to think about failure.
Failure is no reason not to try
Failure is terrifying until it happens. When faced with the possibility of failure, we let our imaginations run wild creating the most epic failures imaginable. In reality, the chances that something go that horribly wrong are very unlikely. Consider public speaking—a common fear. People are terrified of failing a speech. In our imagination, we picture the entire audience rolling on the floor in fits of laughter or booing us off stage. But we know that whenever a presentation goes horribly wrong, the audience is sitting there uncomfortable, but rooting for the speaker. Sports is the same. Famous basketball player (many consider the greatest of all time) Michael Jordan said this about failure, “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.”
Failures are a great way to learn
Spend more time studying failures than successes. You can learn more about money from the person who went bankrupt with a subprime mortgage than you can from Warren Buffett. That's because it's easier and more common to make stupid mistakes than it is to be brilliant, so you should spend more effort trying to avoid bad moves than making good ones. Economist Eric Falkenstein summed this up well: "In expert tennis, 80% of the points are won, while in amateur tennis, 80% are lost. The same is true for wrestling, chess, and investing: Beginners should focus on avoiding mistakes, experts on making great moves.” Huge advances in many things occur by learning simple rules of thumb designed to avoid failing through the most common mistakes. For carpenters it’s, “measure twice, cut once” and for sports it’s “Fundamentals. Fundamentals.” There have been many great teams that have fallen apart because they made the stupid mistakes. What defines them is not that they fell short, but that they learned from the mistakes and went back to training with a better idea of how to win. The bottom line is this: never waste an opportunity to learn from failure—either yours or someone else’s.
“If you fail, look for reasons not excuses.” – Ben Lindberg
“It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” – Bill Gates
It’s all about your mindset
Thomas Edison famously stated, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work” when asked about his invention of the lightbulb. You have a choice when you fail at something; you can either choose to learn from it, accept it, and move on or you can let it get to you, get negative, and give up. Successful people have failed many times in their life. Maybe someone has gotten lucky and made it all the way to the top without failing once, but I’ve never heard of them (and I’m sure they’d be famous). You will face failure—why not decide now to take it positively?
Today, make a commitment to taking failure as part of your goals. Take it as a part of the process, a way to learn, and a way to get better. Once you’ve made the commitment, go fail. Try something you want to do and might fail at. Challenge someone way better than you to one-on-one, go out faster on that first lap, hit a couple out because you were trying to put more power in your spike. The chances of failure will be high—but take away everything you can from that failure. Learn from it, realize that it wasn’t that bad, and maintain a positive attitude. Fail and you will get better. Have a great day!