How FAILURE makes things wonderful - An Olympic and a personal perspective - Fail First, Fail Often, Learn Fast!

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Given the Olympics has just concluded, I wanted to choose a topic that resonates well with this great game. Success or Failure. I chose the topic of Failure.There are plenty of articles written about success, failure, rags-to-riches, motivational role models etc., and I don’t want this article to be a “me-too” style post.

Have you ever failed at/in anything (yet)? What is your opinion about failure?

For those saying I have never failed or don’t intend to fail at all, well, good luck to you, you may need to grow up quickly. One can think "Life is Wonderful" and sing "It's a wondeful world" to ponder about success all the time. Not everyone can have a picture perfect record.

• Not even Usain Bolt, who returned empty-handed in 2004 Athens Olympics before his triple-triple feat. Bolt finished 5th in heats in his favorite event 200M with a time of 21.05.
• Not even Michael Phelps who is the most decorated Olympian of all times (and has more medals than India has won so far).  Phelps drew a blank during 2000 Sydney Olympics as a 15-year-old, finishing 5th in the 200m butterfly. Incidentally, Phelps was defeated in 100m Butterfly by a Singaporean prodigy who considered Phelps to be an inspirational role model.
• Aleksandr Karelin – who was known as "Russian Bear" "Russian King Kong" and as considered the greatest Greco-Roman wrestler of all time, had his 13-year undefeated run ended at his final Olympics by a relatively unknown wrestler Rulon Gardner.

 Even Nicola Tesla, who has over 300+ patents credited to his name by various nations across the world, considered to be one of the brightest geniuses to have changed the world for the better had his share of failures.  He failed to put his grandfather’s clock together post his experiments. He struggled in education and was nearly failed (a bit of similarity when you compare his contemporary inventor Thomas Alva Edison). Compared to today’s entrepreneurs, Tesla failed to make a fortune with his brilliant innovations. He was contented with what he achieved via self-actualization. The great artist Vincent Van Gogh may draw a parallel here.

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. - Thomas A Edison

Let me tell you a personal story. Growing up, I considered being a failure to be a very bad thing. Albeit this applied to studies. I was good in studies. Little did I know I was a big failure in sports and fitness (which I admitted only at a very later point in time)? Most of the friends I knew were having a similar view. When I got promoted to eighth grade from seventh I joined a friend who was detained in eighth– albeit being a brilliant academic person. He was disciplined for someone else copying his answers during final exams. He went on to become a very happy, contented and a successful software engineer. His success was not deterred by this minor blot in his life but made him a stronger, mature and careful person.

  I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying. - Bill Gates

Coming to my second story - During my engineering days, we had a brilliant professor with a very creative mind as our head of the department. I studied Computer Science. My classmates are all brilliant. We had a programming lab exam during our second (sophomore) and third (junior) year of college. While most of the other institutes were giving very simple logic problems to solve in a 3 hour exams (such as writing a Fibonacci series, writing out prime numbers, simple sort algorithms or creation of a linked-list), our professor was giving very difficult problem that typically encompasses (3 or 4 simple to average top-coder puzzles or a group of problems given in a ACM-ICPC sub-regional level contest). It was a stress and endurance test for all the students. Many panicked at the sheer pressure of time-limit and the complexity of the problem to solve. What it ended up doing a few things.

1. It showed real stars in programming and they were not academically toppers all always.
2. It taught a few lessons to those who failed in the exam(s) to take things seriously.

I passed both the exams on my first attempt, fortunately. What I noted was really heart-whelming. A set of my classmates who had failed during the second year programming lab took it as a challenge and started to scour through all the difficult algorithms, problems and ended up becoming the best coders by the end of the third year. They also took a super challenging project for their final year thesis. The students who didn't fail were not having the intrinsic motivator to propel themselves to the next level. What I noted was whilst all my classmates are doing very well in their fields, I could still see some of the students who faced the pressure test became diamonds. To draw parallel, carbon becomes charcoal, graphite or a diamond depending on the pressure and the location. A failure made a few of my classmates become diamonds as programming stars.

Nothing in this world can take the place of PERSINSTENCE. TALENT will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. GENIUS will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. EDUCATION will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. PERSISTENCE and DETERMINATION alone are omnipotent. ---  Calvin Coolidge

Again, failure teaches a lot of things. One can fall forward towards one success. Mo Farah, an Olympic middle distance double-double champion had his sense of glory in Rio 2016, where he fell on the track during 10K and still won a gold medal.

Alibaba.com’s Jack Ma had in numerous rejections. Ariana Huffington had a lot of rejections. Walt Disney, Thomas Alva Edison, Oprah Winfrey, Henry Ford and many others faced difficult destiny and failures to succeed.

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

How can one forget the challenges/failures faced by JK Rowling in the streets of Edinburgh to become one of the greatest and well-known writers of our era?

Her commemoration speech on the same topic is a brilliant one to watch.

But the beauty of failure is how one comes over this gracefully. Towards this, I want to share a couple of brilliant videos I came across.

• Never say give up – a true Olympian moment. This great emotional video about 400m athlete Derek Redmond during Barcelona depicts the power of never say quit attitude with Just do it attitude. The pride of a dad and agony of the pair is seen in this video. See how Derek’s dad is helping him and his T-shirt and cap says it all “Just do it”, “Have you Hugged your foot today.” An Olympian pride Can do attitude, graceful exit all imbibed in one great moment.

• An inspirational story on turning over failure upside down - Karoly Takacs – One of the best real-life inspirational story.  This story talks about a major disaster putting one’s passion and aspirations to a bin and the power of willingness to overcome the impediments. This also highlights the power of practice, patience, perseverance and determination to succeed. It is difficult to see another athlete like this.

One's only rival is one's own potentialities. One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king. - Abraham Maslow

To summarize, Real success of humanity is how one treats triumph and disaster – success or failure like the evergreen poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling –If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster; And treat those two impostors just the same; You'll be a man"  

A great man with a series of failures (he Lost his Job, got Defeated in Legislative election, had a Failed Business, Lost his childhood sweetheart early in life, Had a nervous breakdown, got Defeated for Speaker post, Lost re-nomination poll post an interim success, got Defeated for Senate, got Defeated for VP Nomination, Defeated again for Senate re-election) became President of the USA during one of the most difficult times in history and changed the global outcome with a brilliant tenure and a speech that is still resonating in an eternal hegemony of brilliance – Abraham Lincoln is a testimony to the power of overcoming failures gracefully.  His life is a classic example of the quote “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." By Winston Churchill. To succeed, one should fail first, fail fast and learn lessons fast to move towards success quickly, gracefully and courageously.

 When did you fail last? What’s next?

 I hope you liked this article. Your comments are welcome!

P.S:- My other Linked articles are available at the following link - https://www.dhirubhai.net/today/author/0_2hn6MK-7vnVyQwcfJEbEGN?trk=prof-sm 

Credits:Image created using CANVA. All Links correspond to public URLs available and credit goes to respective authors. Respective trademarks owned by corresponding firms. Opinions about tools highlighted are from a personal experience standpoint and in no way reflect the views of my current or past employers or clients.  All the quotes and poems referred to are from respective owners and links to videos are linked from the original site. Quotes are available in the net and can be seen in multiple sites such as GoodReads, BrainyQuotes etc.

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