It’s an F word we don’t like to hear too! And yet what do we mean by it, and in turn for the term ‘success’? Are they at polar opposites of a spectrum? They certainly sound like opposites after all!
The relationship between failure and success
Winston Churchill once said “success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." How refreshing to hear a perspective that success actually consists of failure! In other words, if you are afraid of failure, are you ever giving yourself a chance to succeed?
Here’s a very scientific drawing that I think sums up this point quite well:
Perhaps success and failure are not quite as far apart as we might at first think. First of all, neither are finite states. Something that is successful may not always be as time, trends and tastes pass, and at the same time something viewed as a failure once may change for the better. I’m sure you can think of some examples for each of those. It might be better to use the terms ‘succeeding’ and ‘failing’ – not because ‘failing’ necessarily sounds any less of a blow than ‘failure’, but it at least acknowledges the temporary state of the ‘not working’ part!
what does it actually mean to fail?
Why do the words ‘failure’ and ‘failing’ make us all wince inside a bit? No one wants to be failing... but that could be because of the generally accepted perspective of what it means to fail – to not succeed. I recently heard a very sound view that to fail means to stop. And whilst there may be instances when it is the right thing to stop, a lot of the time we experience failing at something before we experience succeeding. I’ve spoken about driving a car before in my blog on confidence. It feels appropriate to use it again in the context of failing and succeeding. You might not have passed your test the first time, yet went on to pass it the second (or other subsequent!) time. The experiencing of failing the test the first time was of course not pleasant, but it is a marked difference in acknowledging that it didn’t mean you were a failure, instead you learned what to do next time to pass (succeed!). In my personal opinion, denoting a person as a ‘failure’ should be banned because it simply isn’t true! Experiencing the disappointment of failing doesn’t make someone a failure.
Second of all, we all attach our own value and expectation on what failing and succeeding look like. For some, our expectations of ourselves are very high, so meeting the ‘threshold for success’ is harder. For the perfectionists amongst us, experiencing failure of any kind can be a nightmare. For others, their experience of a setback or the experience of something not working out as expected is just a platform to learn, adapt and try again next time, with even more determination. Consider for a moment how you feel when something doesn’t work out well for you. Do you shrug it off and try again with an adjustment or do you beat yourself up for not getting it right first time? As you’ll often hear me say, it is our thinking about a situation (in this case failing) that carries the weight of the impact it has on us, rather than the actual act (of failing) itself. Just being aware of that can be quite eye-opening!
Finally, I think we all have to come to terms with experiencing both succeeding and failing. Even those who experienced what appears to be a disproportionate amount of success (Usain Bolt for example) also experienced failing at certain points in their careers. And in the sporting world, those successes and failures are probably a lot easier to spot and define – Usain would either win, often by a long way, or not. (It’s probably a whole other debate whether finishing second or third are even considered to be ‘failing’ and by whose standards!) Our own experiences of succeeding and failing, whilst they can be as obvious as the example above, e.g. you are offered the role after an interview or you aren’t, there are likely to be many that are more nuanced than that, such as striving to reach a target like a weight-loss goal or earnings target and maybe not quite reaching it, but getting very close.
Consider this scenario: you set yourself a goal to do a 30-min walk every day in the coming week. Half way through the week, you realise you missed a day. How you respond to this realisation gives you an indicator of how you view failing – e.g. you stop because it is now not possible to meet that goal; you continue because you believe it is better to keep going than stop (and if it becomes a new habit, you might achieve it every week not just for one week!); you decide to do 1-hr one day to make up for the lost day, etc. There’s no right or wrong here, just an opportunity to consider how you personally respond to failing.
Finally, I wonder if you give yourself any credit for the areas in your life where you are succeeding or do you focus on the areas that you consider to be failing? And maybe viewing the terms as a little more grey and closer together, rather than black and white and at opposite ends of a spectrum, is more constructive and closer to reality in any event!
I’ll end on another Churchill quote which I think sums up the points made in this blog:
“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
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