The Upsides to Failure
In most cultures, failure is seen as something to avoid at all costs.
Just think about the education system for a start.
It rewards exam success, but it punishes exam failure. From a young age, we learn that making mistakes is a bad thing.
On top of this, we read stories in the news that celebrate a star’s fall from grace or a once successful businessman’s bankruptcy.
This is harmful because it creates a fear of failure, which prevents many of us from reaching our full potential.
By acknowledging it, we can see that it is a natural part of life and an essential component of success.
To get you started on thinking about failure differently, read on to learn about some of the key advantages of not getting things right the first time.
Failure is more informational than success
“I have learned more from my mistakes than from my successes.”
Success is nowhere near as good a teacher as failure.
It's important to celebrate your achievements, but there's not much you can learn from them.
You learn even less from the success of others.
Countless magazine articles claim that if you follow the list of things that billionaires all do, then you too can attain similar heights.
The truth is that attaining disproportionate levels of success involves a considerable amount of luck.
Hard work and talent will get you some of the distance, but you'll need a dose of good fortune to enjoy success of 'outsized' proportions.
Failure, on the other hand, is much more informational.
It reveals things that we can learn from to improve our chances of a favourable outcome next time.
How we feel about one failure versus another is also revealing. It tells us what matters to us most.
Sometimes those are things that we know deep down we need to address, but most of the time we choose to ignore.
Failure leads to positive changes
“Change is painful, but nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”
Failure can be a powerful incentive to change our lives for the better.
It’s easy to plod on with life.
Underneath the surface, we may feel a niggling undercurrent of dissatisfaction - something doesn’t feel quite right.
Sometimes we’re not sure what it is, and other times we’re actively trying to avoid dealing with the issue.
Often, it takes a significant failure in our lives to jolt us into action.
For example, addicts often have to reach rock bottom before they can turn their lives around - it’s as if they need extreme failure to be their catalyst for change.
Even if you are fortunate enough not to have an issue with alcohol or drugs, failure can still be in an essential springboard for positive change in your life.
The relationship that ends on someone else’s terms or the dream job you miss out on can feel demoralising at the time, but they often lead to moments of reflection which take you off in a different and more positive direction.
There is no reward without risk
“Don’t be afraid to take a big step. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.”
We tend to think of risk as a purely negative thing, but there are two sides to it.
One is the ‘downside’ (what could go wrong) and the other is the ’upside’ (what could go right).
For example, if you buy shares in a company, they can go down in value, but they can also go up.
Entrepreneurs inherently understand this.
To outsiders, their behaviour seems incredibly risky because they focus on the chance of failure.
The entrepreneur, on the other hand, is more concerned with the chance of success.
Many of us do not expose ourselves to the potential upside of risk as much as we could safely do so.
We often overlook the fact that it’s impossible to achieve great things without taking on some level of risk.
Failure opens up new possibilities
“Even if you fail at your ambitious thing, it’s very hard to fail completely. That’s the thing people don’t get. ”
In 2013, a box office failure nearly ended Brian Koppelman’s career.
His agent told him he was going to be impossible to hire and that he should think about ‘other options.’
With the fear of losing his New York apartment playing on his mind, he embarked upon some of the finest writing of his career.
The result was the critically acclaimed TV show Billions starring Damian Lewis.
Koppelman’s greatest success emerged from a punishing failure.
This story is not unusual - many discoveries and new opportunities have come about as a result of something going wrong.
Penicillin, safety glass, the microwave oven, bubble wrap and the post-it note are just some of the examples.
If you attempt something that fails, you will almost certainly reveal something of value, or as the famous saying goes ‘when one door closes, another opens.’
What are some other upsides to failure? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
