I Beg You To Fail

Life owes you nothing, You owe yourself everything. While failure may be one of our biggest fears, it's also our strongest opportunity: if you let it. Please let it be what it is.

Fail hard. Make mistakes because you're human. Accept that you're not perfect, and please try to accept that you are not the smartest person in the room. But most importantly, I beg you to accept each misstep, failure, or however you want to characterize it: as a moment of grace and self-reflection. I beg you to become a better person today than you were yesterday, held only by standards that are your own.

Question 1: So what, a co-worker, boss, or client made you doubt why you're in your job to begin with?

Take a moment and project yourself one year, one day, five months, ten years from now. Ask yourself this one question: will this moment be your defining life decision? If your answer is yes, please stop reading. If your answer is no, continue on.

Our industry's most powerful, humble and intuitive leaders have failed. And guess what? They've done it more than once.

So, kind soul, let me ask you this: what makes you different? What makes your leadership worth a doubt?

Nothing. Yes, I said it: absolutely nothing. I don't worry about your trajectory - it's set in motion by you and you alone. I also don't care if you've had 1 month, 1 year, a decade or even more of experience: I hope you continue to fail and learn from it. And be better by it.

Did you know that Thomas Edison spent 1,000 tries before he developed a successful prototype. “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” a reporter asked. “I didn’t fail 1,000 times,” Edison responded. “The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”

"Unlike Edison, many of us avoid the prospect of failure. In fact, we’re so focused on not failing that we don’t aim for success, settling instead for a life of mediocrity. When we do make missteps, we gloss over them, selectively editing out the miscalculations or mistakes in our life’s résumé. “

Failure is not an option,” NASA flight controller Jerry C. Bostick reportedly stated during the mission to bring the damaged Apollo 13 back to Earth, and that phrase has been etched into the collective memory ever since. To many in our success-driven society, failure isn’t just considered a non-option—it’s deemed a deficiency, says Kathryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.

“Of all the things we are wrong about, this idea of error might well top the list,” Schulz says. “It is our meta-mistake: We are wrong about what it means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition.” - Kathryn Schulz.

Question 2: Why fail when you can be the best?

Listen up: you're not the best. You do not have all the answers. Be the dumbest person in the room and if you're working with coworkers who don't appreciate that, move along. Life's too short.

With failure, and missteps along the way, we become who we are meant to be. Plain and simple.

We learn from business and life's lessons and we know how to navigate even the seemingly most difficult situations of all.

More importantly, we show humanity. Vulnerability. A willingness to adapt and change. An ability to be nimble. Traits that some people may not embody because, well, you know, ego gets in the way.

Question 3: Not convinced?

Here are a few snippets that might get you to a somewhat pleasant middle ground when you feel like you're just not good enough.

In an interview with CBNC.com and other sources, one of the late Steve Jobs' primary motivation in realizing success - while morbid - was realizing that one day, as evolution and mortality show us - was that he would eventually die one day. He gave this talk at a 2005 Yale Commencement Speech. His mantra? "You've go to find what you love." So go find it. And I beg you, let it run your life.

According to Jobs, this "...is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make big choices in life. All fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."

If that doesn't move you, I beg you to also unfollow me because identification with humanity is what keeps us going.

Remember: Jobs dropped out of college. He got kicked out of his own business, and then later rejoined.... when he was failing.

But each failure brought Steve Jobs one step closer to realizing success for Apple. A trillion-dollar company, how could you "coast" and be praised for "all the right things" but still be successful? No.

How about this: define your fears instead of your goals? Embody "fear-setting," a practice that "documents fears, lists what may or may not happen as a result of that fear and then [write] down what he can do to prevent it.

Entrepreneur Ted Ferris says that he can trace all of his biggest wins to fear-setting. Why? Because his hardest choices and biggest fears are often what he needs to do most.

According to a 2017 YouTube-listed TED Talk with Ferris, he eloquently states:

Conversely, let's say you're a quarterback. You miss a pass.

You get furious with yourself. That could cost you a game. If you're a CEO, and you fly off the handle at a very valued employee because of a minor infraction, that could cost you the employee. If you're a college student who, say, is in a downward spiral, and you feel helpless and hopeless, unabated, that could cost you your life. So the stakes are very, very high.

Question 4: But what happens when those stakes are so high? Isn't that scary? Doesn't it make you want to take a permanent sabbatical?

No.

Your opportunities for success are greatest when the stakes are high. Recognize where you are. Take it one step at a time. As a crisis communicator and reputation manager, I will tell you one thing from my own experience: snap decisions. Hard stop.

Decisions in the moment are what define you. So what if the stakes are high? When did you start doubting yourself? According to Ferris:

"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality," by Seneca the Younger, who was a famous Stoic writer.

So, fail., Fall forward. Embrace what is, and trust that you're on the path you are meant to be.

In his speech to Yale, Jobs made one of the most powerful remarks I'll recall (not having gone to Yale):

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down — that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

Lesson One: stop apologizing for being human. Please!

I am guilty of this. We all are. but just, stop. I beg you to stop. It doesn't mean you shouldn't course-correct when you're in the wrong. But for your sake, don't be a martyr.

In the wise words of late Jobs: Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

In my own words: don't you dare give up on yourself or doubt yourself.

Lesson Two. Still really not convinced? Wow, you are a tough crowd. I can only resort to the following since we're not birds of a feather.

Quotes that might help you get through whatever it is you're enduring, courtesy of SUCCESS magazine on what it means to fail fearlessly:

1. “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” —Michael Jordan

“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

1. “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
2. “If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.” —Zig Ziglar
3. “If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.” —Woody Allen

“What matters is this: Being fearless of failure arms you to break the rules. In doing so, you may change the culture and just possibly, for a moment, change life itself.” —Malcolm McLaren

5. “I’ve probably earned the right to screw up a few times. I don’t want the fear of failure to stop me from doing what I really care about.” —Emma Watson

In my final words on this article: If you're being bullied into feeling like a failure: find another path that empowers you. We know what that means without me having to state it. We all get that failure is more "public" than success. Use it to your benefit.

I believe in you as much as, if not more, you believe in me. Now go seize the damn day.

Sasha Gruber