How to fail better
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Samuel Beckett
I have recently spent a fair bit of time in a local Itsu week on week. Whilst busy drafting pieces or reading, I have also had the opportunity to do some nosey people watching.
Recently I got to witness two similar scenarios. The parent waiting, mulling over a green tea, while their offspring arrives clasping a piece of paper in hand. The first scenario, the father leaps up to give his daughter a massive hug, they smile, the relief and paternal pride was palpable. They both stare at the piece of paper in wonder and delight, practically skipping out the door. The second scenario the daughter storms in, shoulders hunched, the piece of paper crumpled up. The mother remains seated while her daughter’s voice breaks and tears well up in her eyes. The daughter speaks of her frustration and humiliation. She types away on her phone, announcing her news on social media. Her distress was clear for all to see. Her mother struggled to comfort her, telling her not to worry about it (easy for you to say mum)!
And so, you might wonder what on earth is going on here? Well, the two scenarios demonstrate the vast difference between pass and fail (this being the driving theory test). Seeing this contrast made me wonder about what happens for us when we fail and how we might learn to essentially fail better, as Samuel Beckett advised.
Why it’s tough to fail.
Often when we experience failure, we do things that actually make things worse not better for ourselves. Anyone who has tried to follow a strict diet might know the feeling, you break a little say with eating a biscuit and then proceed to eat most of the packet! So, one failure seems to attract more in kind adding to our spiral downwards.
Failure makes us feel bad and for most of us this is not a desired state of being and so when failure comes a knocking, we often resist from letting it in to avoid these negative feelings. The extent to which the failure is connected with our sense of identity will be a major factor in how we regard what’s happened. Failure can often bring into focus the false persona we’ve created for ourselves and lead us to directly confront that loss of identity. We need to remember that being and doing are not the same, just because something I did failed, doesn’t mean I am a failure.
Dwelling on our failures is seen as a kind of defence against recognising what’s happened and allowing it to change us. Learning from failure isn’t the same as rumination (i.e., obsessively going over and over it in our minds). Dwelling only internalises the experience, strengthening our brain’s reactive neural networks and make us less successful at problem solving and controlling our emotions. Likewise threatening ourselves to not fail again (i.e., “do this right or you’ll end up like last time.”) can also have the same effect. Research has shown that avoidance motivation (as psychologists call it) induces anxiety and ultimately impairs performance. Learning from failure requires more cognitive energy (as it often involves reconciling a conflict with our beliefs and expectations), something we’ve been evolved to conserve, and so we might unconsciously avoid this process.
How to fail better
So, given that we often struggle to manage our failure, how can we make the best of the experience to help us grow and develop?
- Develop a growth mindset – The attitude we adopt when we fail is massively important as to how we’re going to learn from the experience. First, we might need to recognise that our mindset is negative (e.g., after a job interview rejection, we think “I’ll never get a job”) and develop another voice to challenge this negativity. We need to cultivate what American psychologist, Carol Dweck calls a growth mindset, this being an openness to learning from failure in service of our own development.
- Know what you can control – Dwelling on our failures only keep us stuck in an emotional doom-loop. We cannot change the past, but we can do something about our future. Working out what variables we can control and what ones we can’t, helps us eradicate feeling demoralised and helpless and increase our chances of success in the future.
- Get a goal, know your values – Knowing what you want to achieve and why, is key to getting some focus and taking any setbacks in your stride. Studies have proven that having realistic goals aligned to our values directly contributes to success.
- Make a plan – Successful people often plan for future failure, not meaning they intend to fail, but they have backups in case of emergencies. This can help us stay focused and not chose the path of least resistance (which our brains naturally want to veer towards without a plan). For example, if you want to dedicate an hour each morning to journaling or a hobby, then turning off your phone before the hour starts will surely help you reach your goal. Or if you want to run outside each week, picking a day with good weather and planning a possible route will help you get to success.
- Build up your failure muscle – If we can start getting comfortable with experiencing failure, even in small ways, we can become more tolerant of when it happens to us in bigger ways. So, for example if we start a new hobby (drawing, singing, dancing etc.) something we won’t be successful at, then we can get better acquainted with the feelings which arise when we struggle or fail. We essentially build up our failure muscle so we can manage future failures better. Also, there is a concept called “productive failure” where those who throw themselves at a task with minimum guidance or instruction will likely fail but will learn more and do better next time. This makes me think of watching a toddler learn to walk, they don’t read a manual, they just keep trying and trying, falling, and falling, until they reach their wobbly success.
- Find a failure mentor –Sometimes it’s important to be reminded that even those who we view as incredibly successful, suffered failures in their lives. For example, Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Oprah was demoted from her news anchor job as she was informed, she wasn’t a good fit for television. Walt Disney was fired from his job at a newspaper for lacking originality and imagination. Even Albert Einstein who didn’t speak till the age of four was written off by his teachers! Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, failed many times before reaching success, he is quoted as saying “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
- Celebrate the wins – No matter how small, don’t forget to celebrate your wins as they come, each win will feel like we’re closer to our goals and will increase our motivation and improve our performance, something called the “goal looms larger” effect.
- Give failure a rebrand – A positive way of thinking about failure is that it’s just another word for learning. Try to consider failure as a teacher, not something to be ashamed of or dismiss. There is something for us to learn if we’re open to it. Connected to this, I really like author Leo Babauta’s idea to not see decisions as final choices but experiments. This can hopefully alleviate the anxiety we can experience when we’re scared of making the wrong move.
Conclusion
Failing, although often painful at the time, is fundamental to ourselves as imperfect beings. It’s inherent to who we are. If we truly live full and rich lives, failure is bound to happen. Failure reminds us that we are forever incomplete (leave perfection for the gods as Marion Woodman says). There is a constant gap between what we are and what we can be. This gap keeps us motivated towards growth and individuation. So, let’s embrace our failures and see them for the learning opportunities that they truly are.
Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash
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