Failure has taught me more than success

Share one of the best gifts you’ve ever received.

It might not seem like a gift, but failure really is one of the greatest gifts you can receive.

As a child I was crippled by the idea of doing things “wrong”. It created so much anxiety. In my young little mind my role no matter the situation, was to be a good girl, listen in school, get good marks, perform perfectly and to NOT disrupt anyone else. What ultimately happened is I became focused on everyone else around me. I didn’t avoid failure to succeed, I avoided failure to prevent failing in the eyes of others.

But this focus completely jammed opportunities for learning. You don’t learn anything when your entire lens is laser focused on avoiding the worst. You block creative thinking, you avoid collaborating with others, you lose inspiration and free-flowing thought because your energy is only targeted at avoidance. You don’t lean towards growth, you lean towards fear. And that triggers nothing but stress. You end up isolated, scared and frozen.

What’s worse is you miss out on the opportunity to learn about yourself – what you’re capable of, what you value and what you want to do with your time, skills and energy.

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Success is built on piles of failures

Our culture glorifies “winners”, entrepreneurs who win big, performers who fill stadiums, business owners who make tonnes of money. But what you don’t hear about in these stories are the failed business attempts that happened along the way, the lost time and money, the years spent singing to small crowds, the labels that dumped them, the parts of their personal life that suffered while they laser focused on success. Their success stories are filled with failure after failure after failure. If any one of these individuals gave up the minute they hit a wall of failure, they would never have achieved ultimate success. The skin thickens and the success is finally reached when you strap in, put on your helmet and are prepared to walk through the gauntlet of failure.

The goal switches from aiming for perfection, to simply celebrating practicing something at all. You achieve more this way.

Why I aim to fail, and so should you

Once I’d grown up and learnt that failure is basically inevitable and that success can only be reached via failure, my goal has shifted to do just that. If I’ve failed, it means I’ve made a solid attempt, and that is doing better than the majority of people out there who don’t even try at all. When it comes to my novel writing, I can’t edit and refine a blank page – I have to start with something scrappy, so I aim for scrappy. I’m not a very cardio fit person, but I enjoy running, so aim to finish a run or a race, not shoot for a record time. When I’m learning a new recipe simply giving it a go is the win, not getting it completely right and earning a Michelin star. Failure becomes the success. When you fail you get more feedback in the moment about how to tweak what you’re doing next time – add more salt, add more descriptions about characters, pace myself on my runs. Every time I fail I learn something new about me, the task in front of me, and what I can do next time. And this is the journey of our lives. Embrace it!

Photo by the blowup on Unsplash