Failure - Is there such a thing?

As a baby, you learned how to walk by trial and error. The first time you made the effort you fell down and returned to crawling. You ignored your fears about falling and the results you had produced. You stood up again and again and fell again and again. Eventually, you stood with a wobble and then another fall. Finally, you walked upright. Suppose as infants we had learned to fear failure. Many of us would still be crawling around on all fours.

You cannot fail, you can only produce results.

It is the same with everything in life. Our nature is to act and produce results without fear. Yet, because, we have been educated to think critically and judgmentally, we imagine strong reasons for inaction and then allow it to become our reality, even before we make an attempt. Our fear is supported by an illusion that it is possible to fail, and that failure means we are worthless.

You cannot fail, you can only produce results.

The reality is that there is no such thing as failure. Whenever we attempt to do something and fail, we end up doing something else. You cannot fail, you can only produce results. Rather than judging some result as a failure, ask "What have I learned about what doesn't work?", "Can this explain something that I didn't set out to explain?","What can I do with these results?", and "What have I discovered that I didn't set out to discover?".

Take the first aeroplane. On Dec. 8, 1903, Samuel Pierpont Langley, a leading government-funded scientist, launched with much fanfare his flying machine on the Potomac. It plummeted into the river. Nine days later, Orville and Wilbur Wright got the first plane off the ground. Why did these bicycle mechanics succeed when a famous scientist failed? It was because Langley hired experts to execute his theoretical concepts without going a series of trial and errors. Studying the Wrights' diaries, you see that insight and execution are inextricably woven together. Over the years, as they solved problems like wing shape and wing warping, they made many mistakes which inspired several adjustments all of which involved a small spark of insight that led to other insights. Their numerous mistakes led to unexpected alternative ways which, in turn, led to the numerous discoveries that made the flight possible.

Learn to Fail

It is a paradox of life that you have to learn to fail in order to succeed. Henry Ford's first two automobile companies failed. What he learned from his failures led him to be the first to apply assembly line manufacturing to the production of affordable automobiles in the world. He became one of the three most famous and richest men in the world during his time.

When Thomas Edison was seeking to invent the electric light bulb, he had thousands of failures. He would record the results, make adjustments and try again. It took him approximately 10,000 experiments to invent the perfect set-up for the electric light bulb. Once an assistant asked him why he persisted after so many failures. Edison responded by saying he had not failed once. He had learned 10,000 things that didn't work. There was no such thing as a failure in Edison's mind.

When you try something and produce a result that is not what you intended but that you find interesting, drop everything else and study it.

. A DuPont chemist Roy Plunkett set out to invent a new refrigerant. Instead, he created a glob of white waxy material that conducted heat and did not stick to surfaces. Fascinated by this "unexpected" material, he abandoned his original line of research and experimented with this interesting material, which eventually became known by its household name, "Teflon."

If you just look at a zero 0 you see nothing, but if you pick it up and look through it you will see the world. It is the same with failure. If you look at something as a failure, you learn nothing; but look at it as your teacher and you will learn the value of knowing what doesn't work, learning something new, and the joy of discovering the unexpected. Failure