Why Everyone Must Learn To Give Failure A Chance

I bet on first sight reading the words give failure a chance seems absurd. John Lennon singing Give Peace A Chance – reasonable. Reading the words give failure a chance – not so much.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you may think that I have truly gone out on the proverbial limb this time – the limb right where one flew over the Coo Coo’s Nest – by making this give failure a chance assertion. No need to worry about me though; I’m not crazy. I’m in my right mind or at least I was the last time that I asked myself. Let me check again. “Nate, you okay?” “I’m oh so good!” “Trust me when I tell you!”

Give Failure A Chance

Really, I am okay. I’ve never seen things clearer. I’m just a simple man sharing my equally uncomplicated thoughts. When I say that we should give failure a chance I do so believing that failure is a necessity. Not only do I believe failure should be experienced; I am convinced that we must learn to embrace failure. Sadly, I have noticed that rather than embracing failure, most of us act like failure is a terminal disease.

Failure is not cancer and our diet and exercise habits suggest that we are more obsessed with avoiding failure than the Big C itself.  So consumed with our family’s success, our individual accomplishments and our group equality – getting our just rewards if you will – we far too often miss the most obvious point staring us right in the face. Failure is the inoculation that makes it possible for our family to succeed, for the realization of our individual accomplishments and the progression towards our group’s equality.

That’s profound I know. I told you that I wasn’t crazy. I’m a bad man!

Failure is not the disease that keeps you from achieving. Failure is the medicine that helps you succeed. Nothing and I do mean nothing has ever or will ever be invented, created or accomplished without failure. Don’t take my word for it – for the love of failure – check out the history of the world’s most important discoveries and inventions.

Continue In the Name of Failure

The Renaissance man C.S. Lewis once wrote “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement. Mr. Lewis specified in these words that failures are the directional signs that help us matriculate towards our goals or objectives. Failure guides us to be able to do what we love, to live up to our enormous potential and to be wholly authentic.

In modern vernacular, failure is like a GPS or Google maps. Failure – no matter the destination – provides a clear path to getting precisely where we say we want to go – success, fame and achievement. Yet, most people, adults in particular, shy away from doing things that will get us where we claim we want to go. The greatest irony is that we choose to go the wrong way, do the wrong things and/or do nothing. We avoid all the available directional signs – failures (trials and tribulations) – expecting somehow to get what we wanted and maintaining the belief that we will still arrive at our desired location.

Same Soup Just Boiled Over

In the words of a very intelligent man whom I call BFAM, approaching and experiencing life the way most adults do is best described as having the same pot of soup re-warmed for every meal – each day over and over and over again the same pot of soup. Albert Einstein also had an expression for this daily experience and life philosophy which he called insanity.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Wanting success, achievement and equality while wanting to avoid failure is insanity. You cannot have one without the other. Despite the obvious simplicity and well-known truth behind this expression, adults don’t appear to be inclined to discontinue modeling this absurd behavior for children.

I Go To Work

http://youtu.be/agnKPLrG2E0

Take the parent who continues working at the same stale company doing the same insipid job because they want to avoid failure. They justify their continued employment even when they know they are either constantly disrespected, over qualified, bored to tears, barely able to make ends meet and/or over worked.

Moreover, this counterproductive behavior wreaks havoc on not just their physical health but their mental health. They develop a quasi-split personality where two versions of themselves participate in routine destructive internal conversations. I’m sure you are familiar with this dialogue:

• The willing you asks “What else could I do?” The unwilling you responds “nothing, you better be happy with what you have.”
• The willing you says “This is all I have ever done maybe it’s time to do something different.” The unwilling you says “you don’t know how to do anything else.”
• The willing you says “maybe I could go back to school or get training in something different.” The unwilling you says “you don’t have time and besides you would be the oldest person in the classroom.”
• The willing you surrenders to the unwilling you and you say to yourself “I can’t now”, “it’s not the right time” or “maybe later”.

What your Sybil like internal communication illustrates is that maybe I’m not the one you should be worried about. I keep trying to tell you that I’m not the one who flew over the Coo Coo’s Nest

Seriously, fake psychiatry and an unofficial mental health diagnosis aside, something really is wrong. We keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. We want something better for ourselves, we want to live a happier and more fulfilled life, we want to be better than anytime previous yet we remain unwilling to give failure a chance.

Besides allowing the unwilling you to win and simply outlining a litany of schizophrenic excuses for us to continue to choose from, we are modeling for our children how to be afraid of failure – how to never know success. We are modeling for our children how to be comfortable with being ordinary, how to accept being marginalized and how to make certain that none of their dreams ever come true.

Do As I Say Not As I Do

Even in our misguided best case scenario, things won’t work out that well. Telling your children what to do while being unwilling to try much less follow your own advice is passé.

If parents reject failure yet manage to raise children who embrace failure, parents will be raising children who will only grow to resent them. Children will resent parents because of the overt hypocrisy. Parents ask children to take leaps of faith, while being unwilling themselves to take baby steps forward.

Great parents don’t resist trying. Great parents give failure a chance. Great parents would never have the nerve to ask their children to do something they themselves will not do – give failure a chance.

Remember failure is meant to be the directional signs towards achievement not the deterrent to trying something new, challenging yourself or making an impact that changes the world. For your child’s sake, for your mental health and for the progression of the world, please give failure a chance.

What lesson about failure are you teaching your child? What are you still doing because you have yet learned to give failure a chance?