The Gift of Failure

by Candice De Sormeaux

“If you are not making mistakes, you’re not taking enough risks,” – Debbie Millman

Taking risks, whether calculated or not, isn’t easy. In fact, the human psyche is wired to constantly grasp at the security of our comfort zones and the assurance of our familiar patterns. However, if we think of failure as both an art and a science, it may help us to dive more readily into the depths of the abyss of the unknown and transcend our mental blocks to achieve growth and learning.

Luckily for us, there are many ordinary and extraordinary persons doing that thinking for us. Their musings and recommendations can help us feel more positive about our own epic failures in all spheres of our being.

Here are some perspectives on how we can fail better:

“Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before.” – Debbie Millman

• How do we stand in a place where we would rather not and expand in ways we never knew we could? Daring to fail is a largely contrarian concept in our present era which is laden with countless ways to distract ourselves from discomfort. Training and retraining that muscle to go from give up to get up and try and try again, seems a Herculean task. However, the answer to life’s most complicated problems tends to be the simplest one. Surrendering to the process and accepting that failure is a necessary pre-condition to learning, innovation and human advancement is a psychological cushion to the inevitable fall.

 

“There is no such thing as failure — failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.” – Oprah Winfrey

• No amount of Haagen Das ice cream or five layer high, double chocolate fudge caramel cake could ease the pain and embarrassment upon realizing that you messed up the interview for your dream job. So after drying your tears and hours of self-disparaging sessions, your brain flips the script and you emerge from your hole not as a failure but one who has had a ‘learning experience’, ‘a trial’ or ‘a reinvention’. These euphemisms not only placate our mental trauma, but begin to transform it from the static, seemingly permanent state of failure. It is a cliché to say simply that we learn the most from failure. Transformation comes from how we choose to speak about it and move on.

 

“The opposite of failure may not actually be success, which is largely a temporary label affixed to us by others, but rather reconciliation” – Frederick Douglass

• Redefining success to cope with the challenges of failure may not simply be seen as a psychological self-imposed ruse. Studies have shown that persons who equated success with a reflection of their natural ability learned much less than those who saw it as a product of their effort; the former group dreaded failure as a tell-tale sign of their insufficiency, while the latter saw in it as an invitation to change course, to try harder, to grow. Failure allows us the chance to align our past with an expanded vision that has just come into view. Therefore, defining success as simply an opportunity to reconcile with our past can work wonders for coping with our everyday failures.

Venturing into uncommon ground can be a stiflingly frightening experience. But all the great minds agree that it is a necessary step on the path to self-actualization and fulfillment.