Changing Perspectives: Failure as a step towards Achieving.
Failure is,
If anything, it should be odd to see success all around you.
The world seems to spotlight success, so much so that it can almost be detrimental to experience failure. After all, who wants to fail?
I have found that the need to not fail leaves me in a cycle of paralysis, stuck at the impasse of maybes, wants, and ought to be’s,. Perhaps, in an almost pyrrhic way, this is being written for myself, to ignite the potential stored within the cycle, while also exploring and quelling 2024’s failures.
There’s a feeling of melancholia that has become an odd collaborator.
This isn’t a cry for help, but more so an observation– an exercise in (loathe) self-awareness– but a good lens to focus through. We want to understand failure and how to deal with it.
It is important to understand what failure is, and the contexts that give it meaning; understanding the importance of resilience: reframing perspectives of failure and embracing failure as a fresh foundation to build upon, and the opportunity it provides to begin anew.
While I believe that failure can feel tragic in the moment, it is, without a doubt, an opportunity learn, and a reason to try again.
As mentioned, the issue with defining failure is that when we look at how it is construed and reinforced in our lives, it is pretty black and white.
Failure is seen as the antithesis to success. If success is achieving, and failure not, it can be hard to accept failure as a concept.
The world rewards success, and, I suppose, so it should, however the admiration and support received in contrast to failure, makes failure look terrible.
But why?
On a personal level, we have all experienced failure in some sense and can unanimously agree that it sucks. But if we take a step back, and look at failure from a wider perspective, it becomes a normal aspect of life.
This inadvertently, makes failure contextual.
For instance, take being a child.
It is expected that you fail. You do not begin to walk, until you have failed a number of times. It is an EXPECTATION, that you continue to try. Through life, this idea of failure changes, develops and is recontextualised.
Note: An interesting rabbit hole I fell down is the concept and effects of grading in school. While this isn’t an exploration on pedagogical methods, it is an interesting thought experiment: there is a minimum that needs to be achieved, and not achieving can lead to undesirable outcomes. As you progress, and the tasks become more nuanced, you come to realise that many mistakes can lead to failure. The concept of failing becomes derogatory, it is now associated with the undesirable outcome, and we are left with this deep and uncertain relationship with the idea of failing. Read more here, here, and here!
The idea of failure becomes something to avoid, rather than embrace. Considering we spend a significant part of our lives conditioned to believe that failure must be avoided, it’s not hard to see how or why it remains a state to avoid.
But, in what context do we need to embrace failure?
In a video for Big Think, Professor Amy Edmonson, the Harvard Professor of Leadership and Management, highlights three types of failure: basic, complex, and intelligent. She goes on to define them, however, highlights the significance of intelligent failure. The former two were seen as 'lesser' types of failure that encompass deviations from operating norms, or cases of unique circumstances. Intelligent failure, however, is the ‘right’ kind–the type that provides insight and allows for the development of knowledge.
While the above categorises the first two types of failures as ‘bad’, I would argue that, yes, they are avoidable or (can be) easily rectified, however the ability to deduce lessons and learn from the experience is what makes these somewhat intelligent. If you are learning from it as a whole they can be beneficial for development and understanding,
For instance, in the kitchen, you have an understanding of kitchen staples, ratios and techniques to draw from. There is a defined classical way to make these, and they work.
Sometimes the need to deviate (read: experiment) is great. It can be easy to find yourself substituting or adding ingredients to make something new.
If we were to never deviate from norms and expectations, you wouldn’t have variations of aforementioned staples, think adding garlic to mayo to make aioli, or white wine vinegar, shallots and tarragon to hollandaise to make bearnaise.
But, from the process you can identify and improve the recipe for next time.
With that in mind, again, if we step back to re-recontextualise the held concept, failure can be seen as steps towards achieving. Towards being better.
It would be hard to Imagine a world without failures. Science and Technology would not have us where we are.
Natural selection would have kept us as quadrupeds if being bipedal was not a favourable trait. Thomas Edison, or the people that worked for him, wouldn’t have given us the light bulb if (t)he(y) didn’t fail. We wouldn’t have diode bulbs if the early light bulb didn’t also ‘fail’ in some capacity.
If there aren’t lessons being learnt from the failure, undoubtedly, we can finally call it unsuccessful.
Expecting the different results from the same process is madness after all. Perhaps it is better to look at success and failure like yin and yang, opposing but complimentary concepts that are holistically balanced.
It can be hard to step back and acknowledge that failure is normal, and it can be hard to shake the associated feelings having lived and experienced the feedback loop that praises wins. You do not have to be defined by your failure.
However, when we find ourselves face to face with these feelings, it is important to look at healthy ways that help alleviate the emotional and potential physical toll.
When in a terrible headspace, it can be easy to turn to some pretty destructive habits, think binge eating or drug use– anything easy that gets the dopamine levels spiking.
While these behaviours can help numb the negative feelings, they don’t actually help the us work through the ideas, and behaviours that have either led to, or are a result of suffering.
But how can we work through these failures when it feels like the end of the world?
An undeniably good answer is through resilience. The ability to continue in spite of failure can be the key to better outcomes.
While that seems easy to understand, have you ever thought about what being resilient means?
You could probably guess characteristics and behaviours, but what does it mean contextually, and how is It developed?
Dr Lucy Hone, a respected and highly regarded authority on resilience, shared her experience with loss, and her expert perspective in a powerful TEDtalk.
When dealing with the loss of her daughter, and the resulting emotions, she notes three significant strategies that helped her through the tough times: knowing that suffering is a normal part of life; refocusing attention and reframing; and having the self-awareness, and strength to consider whether coping mechanisms are helping or hindering the process.
Encompassing the above, its safe to say that in order to work through issues, there needs to be a degree of self-awareness, and openness to experiencing the emotions. Understandably, whatever the context of suffering, it can be confronting experience.
Elaborating on Dr. Hone’s experience, the importance of understand loss and suffering as aspects of life is a valuable outlook to adopt. Being able to accept and treat suffering as a tangible part of life allows you to approach and actively work towards overcoming it. An important part of this is being able to understand the facts, and resulting actions, while highlighting the issues, as well as the confounding benefits.
Failure becomes debased from its place of unholy deification, and provides those willing to step forward, and into this suffering and failure the experience and opportunity to improve. If nothing else, it becomes a mental a guide towards healing.
Being resilient then becomes a task of reframing and refocusing on things that you have control over, while also acknowledging those that you cannot.
Psychologically, reframing in a therapeutic context, is known as cognitive restructuring. As a technique it is used to confront and address– usually negative– patterns of thinking. Within the process, it is important to identify and feel the emotions, in order to examine, and develop constructive responses.
It can be easy to wallow in negative self-talk.
We are often our own biggest critics.
Through reframing, that is, again, stepping back from the issue and considering it in a new way, you gain a better understanding of the self by experiencing and understanding the emotions to restructure your healing approach.
If we take this and approach the analysis with self-compassion– treating the self, as you would a friend– we can afford ourselves a significant amount of growth. Through the emotions we can get to the crux of self-awareness. However, in saying so, an examination of emotions and failures can be deep and unpleasant. It can be, and is often, a blow to our self-esteem.
After changing the associated feelings and thoughts, we can begin to look at the importance of considering other aspects of building resilience to move through and process the feelings and realities that comes with failure and loss.
At its core, resilience is simply being able to positively adapt to setbacks. No one wants to struggle. In a post pandemic world, there is a collective understanding of the ease in which we can slip into self-despair.
Contextually, resilience in this case is concerned with failure rather than loss, however reframing–see what I did there? –the ideas above, it is easy to see how widely applicable resilience can be. After being able to step back and look at and experience the feelings, we find ourselves staring at the remains of a ‘what could have been’.
Being resilient affords us the ability to assess how to approach this new opportunity. We aren’t looking at catastrophic failure, but a levelled field in which we can build our new foundation. The final aspect in this journey is thus being open to considering whether skills and strategies being employed are beneficial to your healing.
While it might seem like resilience building is a deeply personal experience of feeling and analysing the self, an important aspect that is beneficial for support is building and maintaining relationships. A problem shared is a problem halved. Having a support system encourages comfort, guidance, assistance, and reciprocity. Discussing issues being experienced can help you feel less overwhelmed and can give you another insight to the problem, or new ideas on how to manage them.
While there are more comprehensive insights on strategies, some basics, such as journalling, or engaging your support network, as well as maintaining a mindset of growth allows for emotional regulation as well as maintaining momentum through the healing journey.
I suppose at the crux of all this is the understanding that resilience is taking care of the self. Being resilient requires degrees of self-care that can include and are things that benefit the self physically, mentally, and emotionally. Failure is a genuine part of life that is essential to growing as a person and developing resilience. While society approaches failure as a terrible burden, it is through the strife, and suffering where we can learn to adapt, embrace, and thrive. We can see that suffering is not the end of the world, but instead a chance to learn. This jaunt is not a catastrophic failure, but a chance to analyse the self, it is a hypothetical tabula rasa – blank slate – on which you can rewrite, or indeed start a new story. As much as resilience involves bouncing back from these difficult experiences, it can also involve profound personal growth. As agreed, failure sucks, but in the state of failing – if you’re willing to feel the emotions and accept short comings – you have the valuable experience and knowledge of what went wrong. Through resilience, self-awareness, and the courage to keep trying, failure becomes not a barrier, but a stepping stone to greatness.
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