The Art of Failure

Learn How to Welcome, Encourage, & Embrace It

"Failure comes part and parcel with invention. It’s not optional. We understand that and believe in failing early and iterating until we get it right."

Jeff Bezos

I am the most successful failure you probably never met or heard of. Some would call it unlucky, but they would be wrong. Luck is based upon chance and probability of success. In fact, our never meeting is just one example of my failure to be a well-known failure or as you might call it, a famous failure. And who would admit they were lucky to meet a failure? Even a famous one?

Nevertheless, like the salesman who must embrace rejections and “Nos” to get that one yes, there is an art to failure. For too long we have held up those who are “winners” as success and shame those who fall on the losing side of the contest as failures. Our society also hails those victors as heroes while tossing aside those losers who missed the mark.

But what if we have it backward? What if those who fail are the actual winners of knowledge and experts of strategy? Then we should all be welcoming, encouraging, and embracing those who fail often as they have much to teach us on how success really works in life.       

All my life, like many people, I have been told to do my best every time and I would be a success. But nobody gave me a time point when that success would show up. Failure is not always the doorway to success, but if you are failing, fail well. That’s my lesson learned. What do I mean by that? Do fail and do it often. Like the game Super Mario, failures lead to a game well played over a learning curve of challenges and mistakes.

Know that from your mistakes, failure teaches that failure is not the end, but the starting point for much more than success can offer – knowledge and creativity. Failure does lead to imaginative ideas and innovation to find the best path to “Won” not “Game Over”. Knowing what the wrong methods are can help shortcut future steps toward seeing the right answers. Perhaps for somebody, not you if you are successful at failing on your personal path of learning and seeing it as all a game, of course.

Failure does not need to be shouted from the roof or broadcast to everyone you know. Be humble and honest about missing the mark or falling into the pits on the way to save the day. After all, failure is art first, then a science. Understanding that like art, learning is all about how you frame the rejection or failure to find success the first time, second time, or even the thousandth time. The science is seeing the reset of opportunity to rule out other possible solutions to get to that “Winner” status.

For some, it takes a short time and they are onto the next win and the next – only to react severely when eventually failure catches up. They are the adults with huge egos built on only flaunting success, who react in loud, overblown shouts of unfairness in a game that is always rigged with a two-sided outcome. Everyone wants the first place trophy. My German grandmother used to tell me nobody wants a "second place cabbage" to spur me on to win. Her point was, losing stinks. But I always welcome the cabbages in life, as I can create new recipes from them.

Here is to failures like me. Understanding how to wait. Giving it another try. Not cheating to find the correct solutions. Accepting rejection time and again. Never adding my name to the list of successful winners. Shaking off the mistakes to see new paths. Embracing reinvention to find the strength to keep going. Unknown and still unsuccessful, I toil over the so many years, asking only, “Don’t judge me - I’m still trying to figure out Super Mario, level 4".