“Pain, discomfort, shock, boredom, impostor syndrome, awkwardness, fear, being wrong, failing, ignorance, looking stupid: Your avoidance of these feelings is stopping you from a life greater than your wildest imagination. These are the feelings that accompany a life of success. And yet, these are the very feelings most often avoided.”
–Benjamin Hardy, Willpower Doesn’t Work
Most of us learn from a young age that failure never ends well and should be avoided at all costs. Lest we forget, failure is the godfather of experimentation – the antithesis to playing it safe. To experiment will always carry a risk of failure. But in doing so, we tap into a mindset that is conducive to the potential reaping of greater rewards. So, let’s make friends with failure.
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I write from recent personal experience. I found myself in a place where I was barely moving. Making safe decision after safe decision, and wondering why I was still standing in the same spot. I realised that an attempt to avoid failure was beginning to thread itself through most of my decisions.
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The side effects of an avoidance of failure can include moving at an unnaturally slow pace; over-calculating, missing opportunity, and finding one’s self in a seemingly unexplained, stagnant space. It’s important today – more than ever – to be patient with ourselves, and to move at our own pace. It’s also important to be vigilant of falling into the habit of practicing too much caution. Self-awareness of one’s own behaviour is important in all facets of life, no less this one. Ask yourself “is there a possibility I’m making this decision, not because it’s the most effective, but because it’s the safest? Might I be unknowingly trying to avoid failure?” Sometimes the answers are unclear at first. Sit with it. Simply asking these questions is a worthwhile exercise.
I write from recent personal experience. I found myself in a place where I was barely moving. Making safe decision after safe decision, and wondering why I was still standing in the same spot. I realised that an attempt to avoid failure was beginning to thread itself through most of my decisions. It wasn’t obvious that this was happening. It had caught me off guard. But admitting it to myself was a relief, as facing any hard truth head on always is. I have since given myself permission to fail as much as I need to, and even better – as much as I possibly can. I now feel as though I have more room to breathe. I feel more experimental.
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Simply choosing to be bolder in your approach is an excellent place to start. Be more audacious in what you are asking of yourself, and of life.
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If, like me, you suddenly notice that you are playing smaller by shying away from failure, simply choosing to be bolder in your approach is an excellent place to start. Be more audacious in what you are asking of yourself, and of life. Aquatint yourself with the idea of failing. There is a figure skating exercise that involves practicing repeatedly falling. The skater will fall on the ice multiple times on purpose to practice getting up and recovering quickly – a beautiful illustration of getting comfortable with failure. Of course, it’s never a good idea to be purposefully negligent in any area of our lives, but to be more embracing of failure will reward us with more room to play, and more confidence and energy in our approach to going after what we want.
Failure isn’t all loss. I believe a failed endeavour constitutes of three parts. The first is always going to be an embarrassing or unfortunate story; though, these are often the most amusing. The second, is the reward of a deeper insight – regardless of failure or success achieved. You gain experience and a lesson that you would have not learned otherwise, along with new information about your situation. The third, is that an alternative or interesting path may reveal itself, which can often hold as much value as achieving the original objective.
