Hi.
I took Jobberman’s soft skills course a few months ago, and something that’s remained in my head since then is Precious’ catchphrase:
“There is no such thing as failure, only feedback.”
Simple sentence, and it wasn’t even the fifth time I heard it. But it was the first time it stayed long enough to become a mantra in my head. I liked the line because it articulated an idea that had been floating in my head for a while without clear form.
If you’ve had a lot of practice with failure or grew up in an environment where the attitude towards failure was largely supportive, it might seem like a no-brainer. But I don’t think it is for everyone. For most of my life, it wasn’t.
While I didn’t grow up insulated from failure, I also didn’t get as much practice with it as early as I should have.
Here’s what I mean.
I failed many times growing up. However, these failures were often really low-stakes or manageable high-stakes. For example, I never really failed in school. Did I get too playful and come home with below-average scores to some chastising once in a while? Yes. But I had always known, even when I didn’t do well, that it was easily within my power to do well.
I often had that sense in life that if I put in the work, I would do well. And every time I did try to do well, I did quite well. It was why such failures always felt artificial and never really bothered me.
My lack of experience with any real, high-stakes failures meant that the first times these high-stakes failures—in the face of which I felt utterly powerless and could not rearrange my life around—came, the experience was so sudden and so strange. The blow had a certain finality to it that nothing in my toolbox had prepared me to grapple with.
The first of such failures came when I was thirteen, or twelve. To be honest, I’m not sure. But it was on such a grand stage, so unexpected, and so embarassing that it fractured the prism through which I viewed life. With no manual to navigate these new, icy waters, I shut up like a clam.
Usually, when I failed, two to six more tries did the trick. There was no re-attempting this one. I had my one shot—which I might have landed on any other day—and I blew it.
It was feedback, all right—but it didn’t feel like useful feedback.
If anything, the unfamiliarity meant I slowly internalised it. It felt like it said something fundamental about the limits of my person, like I had been unmasked, finally. And for a long time, when I met walls I repeatedly failed to scale, I shut up like a clam.
While I often reemerged better, it usually took me way longer than it should have.
I try to avoid staring at dead grass, though it recently struck me that it might have been nice if the space I occupied in the wake of that blow (and subsequent ones) had been slightly different, maybe supportive.
Would it have shortened how long it took me to learn that failure was not proof of anything? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. Some people quickly reach this epiphany on their own. Others need help to get there.
It’s why I think it’s a bit of a tragedy that no one teaches us how to fail, how to do it well without being powdered by the weight. We learn everything else that isn’t quite as useful.
I am hesitant to conclude that failure by itself has any intrinsic value. I doubt it does. However, I believe it can help build character, especially if it happens in a supportive environment.
It’s why I think one of the best things we can do for children is to teach them how to fail early so they can build the resilience required to weather life. The focus is not on engineering this failure. It’s about consciously teaching them how to navigate it, whencever it comes, however it comes, to embrace it as feedback but never accept the finality of it. The mindset it builds goes a long way.
It’s important that we teach children this, but it’s also important that we learn this for ourselves, especially if we didn’t when we should have. I wish it were different, but no one’s coming to teach us.
I hope you are well.
Take care.
Here’s a nice Ted Talk if you’re of that crowd:
Grit: the power of passion and perseverance | Angela Lee Duckworth
And another one if you’re really of that crowd:
The power of believing that you can improve | Carol Dweck | TED
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