Embracing Failure
How do you react to failure in your life? We were recently part of a discussion with Will Jefferson, ex-professional cricketer, on failure and its purpose in life. Here's what we learnt.
By Erin’O Connor
What does failure mean to you?
1 - It’s about not living up to expectation; letting my family, friends or colleagues down, or just not being as good as I expected.
2 - It’s the moment I lose sight of all my good habits.
3 - It’s an opportunity to learn, get back up and try again.
4 - It’s a chance for me to reinvent myself!
5 - It’s a misalignment between my perception of reality and reality itself. There is no such thing as failure.
These are just some of the perceptions of failure shared at an amazing discussion hosted by The Oblique Life, a London-based Member’s Club, a few nights ago. The discussion was part of an ongoing series they host called Pages, where they’ve been exploring human existence and society, delving deep into themes such as identity, time, purpose, faith, happiness and so on. One of the guest speakers was Will Jefferson, former professional cricketer, who helped to lead the conversation from a sporting perspective, but broadening it to everyday life.
‘Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.’
Jordan B Peterson
As Romi Sumaria, co-founder of Oblique, opened up the conversation around failure, it was so quickly evident how much stigma we all attach to the idea of failing and how we need to be more open about talking to one another about our own failures. We need to start normalising failure. We need to start normalising failure. After all, we are inevitably going to mess up, fuck up, trip up, countless times throughout our life. So let’s stop seeing it as something to be ashamed of, but as part and parcel of truly living.
Create a culture of compassion
We need to create a culture of compassionately learning from failure, and it’s something that needs to happen on not just a personal level, but also on a corporate or professional level. Obviously, businesses want to celebrate their successes and their profits - I mean of course, you want to be recognised for all the good things your business is doing! But when we place so much emphasis on winning, succeeding, making more profit, we create such a pressure to not do the opposite.
As Will spoke of his personal experience with failure in the sporting world, namely when injury lead to him having to pivot his career entirely, he mentioned that we live in a ‘fail fast’ culture - ‘we try to move on from failure as quickly as possible.' However tempting it might be to quickly brush past any discomfort, in the end you are only doing yourself a disservice as it is by allowing space for the discomfort that we learn from the experience. “We need to start normalising failure, and embracing all the micro-failures that will eventually lead to success.”
“We place so much pressure on ourselves to not fail in the first place that we end up making the mistakes anyway.”
This is something we can all start to embrace in our lives, no matter whether it’s in sport, in our careers or even in our personal lives - there will be lots of little (or big) failures along the way, but they are not the be all and end all. The key is to recognise that, and use them to propel you forwards towards success.
It is worth mentioning that not all mistakes, or failures, are of the same magnitude. I’m under no impression that huge mistakes shouldn’t have appropriate consequences and sanctions; we still need to make sure we’re accountable for what we do. But what seems to be a big problem throughout all industries is that we place so much pressure on ourselves to not fail in the first place that we end up making the mistakes anyway. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What I think we need to do is work towards removing the fear of failure in the first place. Some ideas that were proposed by the group were for employers and people in positions of power within companies to create the space for these conversations. Regular de-briefs rather than just the quarterly meeting, being more transparent about all the micro-failures that have led to bigger successes.
Don’t get me wrong, we’re not saying you should actively try to fail at something, because that’s counterproductive. But if things don’t work out the way you had hoped, that’s okay. In the spirit of being more open about failures, let me share with you a recent story of mine where I felt like I had failed…
I made a new friend, and as I do with anyone that I’m getting to know, I wanted to hold space for them to speak honestly and openly about things. I’ve always wanted to be a person that anyone can talk to, someone who they feel comfortable being their authentic selves with and feel good about themselves. However, what transpired was that in the process of them opening up to me meant that some anger and pain was unwittingly directed at me. In many ways, I felt like I had failed that person, because my wanting to form a closer bond meant that emotions were brought to the surface that perhaps they weren’t ready for.
While in the moment I felt crappy, it was a good lesson for me. To know that everyone deals with things differently and we need to allow people to work through things at their own pace.
Here are five things I learnt about embracing failure:
1. Give yourself the time to sit with the emotions attached to said failure - yes, it might suck. Yes, it may hurt and yes you may feel embarrassed. But those feelings are an important, if not essential, part of the learning process. The more you can lean into those feelings, the quicker you can recover from the failure. But it’s important to give yourself that time, not to skip over the discomfort. Ask yourself, ‘is it out of my system yet?’
2. A moment of failure does NOT make you any less worthy a person. If anything, it makes you more human. Be kind to yourself.
3. Asking for help is okay - while our talents as individuals are immense, we cannot do everything by ourselves and we’re not always going to have the answers. Seeking help for something you’re struggling with isn’t a weakness, but it shows you have developed a level of humility that is actually a huge strength to have.
4. Remember, oftentimes when things seemingly fail, it’s because they were never in your remit of control in the first place. A lot of us have this tendency to put the locus of control completely on ourselves, meaning that if something goes wrong (for example if the bus you’re on is delayed because of unforeseen traffic, making you late to your morning meeting) you beat yourself up and put the blame on yourself. You start to question why you didn’t anticipate the traffic and get an earlier bus, or foresee all the potential obstacles to success so you could mitigate them all. Unfortunately we are not blessed with the power of precognition (seeing into the future), so let’s try to let go a bit.
5. When you can’t do something, say ‘I can’t do it YET’ - just because it hasn’t been achieved now, doesn’t mean it can’t ever be achieved. You might just have to adjust your timeline. Don’t give up!
In summary I’ll leave you with this. Let’s stop putting so much damn pressure on ourselves to not fail. Be okay with failing! Fail again, and again, and again. Just remember, if and when you fail at something, don’t give up.
ERIN O’CONNOR
Erin is a writer based in London. When’s she’s not attending a space rave, or attempting to make her own face scrub she is writing about anything and everything to do with wellbeing and mindfulness.
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