“Failure is not the opposite of success.”
I bet you have heard this sentence at least multiple times in your life. This sentence usually follows with some context on how you can learn from your failures and start your successful life. Although hearing these stories makes us feel good, we usually are left alone with our thoughts: Isn’t it that when we fail, we are not successful? Why do some failures never lead to success? How are some people always successful and some never?
We all have some past projects that failed multiple times until we abandoned them altogether. There should be more to it than “hang in there until success comes to you!” or “learn from your mistake and move on.” At least in real life, failures are much more complicated than that.
Failure and success follow each other.
Before knowing how to deal with failures, we should understand the relationship between success and failure. As David Hillson described beautifully in his “How to be a successful failure” article, failure starts when a period of success ends, and success begins after a period of failure. In other words, failure and success follow each other.
We can avoid failing as long as we are in our comfort success zone and exploit what has worked for us. There is a boundary to this zone. If we try our best, we can reach the border and come out of the success zone (which means entering the failure zone). If we don’t, we stay in the success zone, but it also means we are not using all our capacity. We have no idea how far our success zone goes or if we have exploited this zone enough. We need to fail, so we are sure. Also, to get to the next-level success zone, we have to pass the failure zone.
Next-level success zone
If we stay in the same spot, we never get broken by failing, but we also miss all the opportunities we could have. If a person never faces a failure in life, it means they have not discovered all of their options and potentials. That successful manager could have been the CEO of the next innovative company, but she never knows because she never got close to the boundary or dared to pass it.
“It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.”
J.K. Rowling
The success zone follows the failing zone. A new level will be unlocked by passing through a phase of challenges, failures, and disappointments. In our example of a successful manager, she has to quit her high-salary secure job to follow her plans. She can’t discover her potential without going through a phase of doubt, disappointment, and insecurity. She needs all the skills and traits she gained through the failing zone to navigate her next-level life.
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Michael Jordan
If you want to know how far you can hop forward, you can try to jump for 10 cm, and you probably do it without falling. However, how do you know what is the farthest you can jump? You have to increase the distance until you get to the point where you can’t reach it. That is your limit.
However, not all failures are glory. We cannot praise all types of failing. A strategic failure is the only category of failing that gets you to the next point. Before getting there, let’s see why failing can help.
Why can failing be good?
Passing through a short-term failing phase is inevitable if we want to grow and get to the next level of success. What is waiting for us on the next level of success that requires such an unpleasant feeling of failure? The next phase for everyone and every situation is different. What is evident is that it is beyond our current comfort zone. We cannot reach it with our current mindset, abilities, and strategy. It requires a modified version of us. Experiencing a failure improves us, so we become ready for the next level of achievement. How does it improve us?
1. It makes us more resilient.
Failing, getting crushed, feeling embarrassed but standing up again make profound personal growth. Next time, we don’t expect ourselves to be successful on the first try. We are prepared to make mistakes, deal with them, and move on.
What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger! Friedrich Nietzsche
2. Our values become more clear.
When everything is working, few of us take the time to reflect on why it is working and how we can improve it. We might even spend lots of time and energy on something just because it is rewarding us. But when we fail, we stop to wonder if that’s what we want or if we are moving in the right direction. Failure is like a nudge to reflect and evaluate our goals and values.
3. Our Ego gets crushed in a good way.
Our ego prevents us from seeing reality by overestimating our abilities. It blocks the criticism by lying about the situation and underestimating the required effort. When we fail and our perceptions are shattered, we are ready to accept new ideas. We have nothing to lose anymore and can see new potentials.
Notice that I didn’t include the benefit of learning from mistakes. Learning is not an automated outcome of failing. It’s a myth that each failure helps us to understand why something is not working. Even worse, it might make us believe that we know what is not working, which in fact, we don’t. For example, our strategy might have failed because it needed a minor modification. But, instead, we might believe that our method is entirely wrong.
When do failures have more harm?
1. We don’t learn from them, but we think we have.
Suppose we try a method, let’ say method A. The result is not successful. Then we might believe that method A was a wrong choice. In fact, our approach was not successful because of some underlying reasons, which have nothing to do with method A. So we think we have learned. Next time, we change our method to B, and it fails again simply because we haven’t resolved the underlying issues. Thus, it is essential to understand all aspects of our results and methods. Making wrong conclusions and not reflecting enough might put us in trouble. Often there is more than one reason contributing to a fail. Have we thought about them all?
2. Make us scared, so we lower our goals.
When we hit the boundary, sometimes we come back to our comfort zone. Instead of pushing forward, we aim for a smaller gain. And we call it a success after failure, which is nothing but a rebound to the previous state.
If our identity doesn’t change and we stay the same, we go back to the previous success zone. We are not moving forward. Peter Thiel, a billionaire entrepreneur, said, “the lessons people draw from most failed startups is that it’s impossible to build great businesses, so they then try something less ambitious, which is one of the other ways failure has a high cost….”.
3. Failing is the result of bad planning (or no planning).
If we started something without a plan, without estimating the cost, or evaluating the result, and it fails, then we haven’t moved forward. If we do something and hoping to get lucky and become successful, then failing might only lower our perceptions. It might only make us believe that greatness cannot be achieved. We didn’t know what to expect, so how can we understand why we failed. This type of failure is not helping us grow, and it only affects our mindset about success.
How to deal with failing?
If failure is an essential part of growth, we need to know how to deal with it. Here is the three-step strategy that can guide us through the failing zone as quickly as possible.
1. Pay the price
Failing at something comes with a cost. We have spent time, energy, or money on something, but we didn’t get the result that we aimed for. Failing is uncomfortable. A more significant mistake causes a more profound trauma. Don’t try to sugarcoat your loss: The first phase of dealing with a failure is to pay its price.
Acknowledge that it is hard and that you are responsible for it. There is no reason to run away from it, avoid the results, or not think about it. It has happened and didn’t end as you hoped. But it’ OK! You should not let this experience slip without serving you any benefit. Turn the table and get ready for the next step! It’s ok to feel disappointed, but it’s not ok to quit or never recover.
Gianluigi Buffon is an Italian goalkeeper who has played for more than 20 years in Italy national soccer team. At the age of 43 and still playing in the Serie A soccer league, he was asked to give his younger self some advice. He said: “It’s important to get things wrong in life. And it’s even more important to pay for your mistakes. If you don’t pay the duty, that duty will still be owed to the end. Feeling embarrassed is an essential part of growth. It makes you feel bad; it makes you reflect; it makes you look at the nuances of a situation.”
Pay the price of your mistake and move on. Then, you are ready for the next step.
2. Analyze it
“Failure is success if we learn from it.”
Malcolm Forbes.
Most people think that learning from failures is straightforward. Amy Edmondson, Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, said even most managers believe the same and ask their employees to reflect on the mistakes and simply avoid them in the future. Learning from our mistakes is not trivial!
The truth is examining our failures is emotionally and cognitively unpleasant. It decreases our self-esteem. We often, even unconsciously, seek evidence that proves we are not responsible. We try to blame an external factor.
However, it is important to be truthful to ourselves. Closely examine all the decisions you made. Here are some example questions you might want to think about after failing at something.
Was your goal clear?
Why did you set that goal?
What was your process to achieve that goal?
Did you have a timeline, and was your timeline realistic?
How did you measure your success?
Put your emotion aside at this step and be real!
Try to get deep, and don’t avoid the parts that make you uncomfortable. Remember that the better you analyze your mistake, the sooner you can achieve your goal. The above questions are some high-level examples. Each question needs to be broken down into more precise questions.
3. Document it
Don’t fail for the same reason twice.
Your analysis and the details of the steps that you took should be well documented. Write it in a journal, a google sheet, or anywhere that is more accessible to you. These notes should become your reference point. Anytime that you are about to make a decision, go and check what you have done before.
It is crucial to do this step.
Don’t assume you already know it. When we write things down and read them a few weeks or months later, we will understand them on a deeper level.
In short, never be scared of failing. If you follow this three-step strategy after each failure, you will reach your goal in the end.
