Failure is not bad
At school, we learn that a good grade is good and a bad grade is bad. We do not learn that effort is important. That improvement is what matters.
We hear and celebrate stories of success without applauding the years of failure that went before it.
It’s embarrassing to fail. There is nothing glorious about it to report on
People don’t look up to your wisdom and chase after you to learn from you. Instead, they listen to the obvious definitions of success.
Yet failure is often the most important part of success
Many would-be entrepreneurs aspire to be billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, or Elon Musk. People who seem to have had unparalleled success from the start. They don’t hear that the biggest predictor of success is the amount of previous attempts.
Elon Musk is known for saying that “Entrepreneurship is like staring into the abyss and eating glass” - This sounds cool when you have the story of subsequent success to go with it.
It doesn’t feel cool when you actually do it and have no idea if you are going to succeed.
"It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure." ― Bill Gates
Hitting rock bottom often defines our success
J. K. Rowling’s mum died as her marriage was falling apart. Stuck with an abusive husband she had to plan an escape with her new child. She felt completely broken.
She had already been working on her book idea but as her experiences shaped her it also impacted her writing. The books grew a much darker tone reflecting the harsh realities and sadness in life.
The heartbreaking difficulties of the characters made Harry Potter the captivating success that outsold every book ever.
The biggest difficulties in our life teach us more than we can ever learn if things work out fine.
"It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default." ― J.K. Rowling
To become a skilled professional we must be comfortable as a terrible amateur.
When Jack Cai set out to break Rubik’s cube world records he signed himself up for years of failing. Repeatedly trying to solve Rubik’s cubes with a blindfold on day in and day out is a highly unimpressive thing to actually live through.
I spoke with him. He fully acknowledged it was kind of lame.
For years he wasn’t cool until one day he was this brilliant guy with 3 world records.
What I found fascinating about his story was that he consciously chose to go for the blindfolded records. It sucked so much that there was less competition and so actively embracing more failure up front gave him a better chance of ultimate success.
Hard work isn’t a montage
A sexy 10-second montage of adversity in a video is much less fun in reality. But those 10 seconds are about all a viewer has time for before they’re bored.
The reality is that most of the things we commonly associate with success are usually many years of just repeated failure. Yet we skip over that.
This makes us unequipped to deal with failure and the time needed to achieve difficult things.
A learner knows if they aren’t making mistakes they aren’t trying hard enough.
Don't fear failure — not failure, but low aim is the crime. In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail. ― Bruce Lee