I want to fail spectacularly

The better title for this essay might have been: I want to learn how to put myself in situations where I might fail spectacularly. (Less catchy, though.)

Since having my son, failure has been on my mind a lot. I want to teach my child how to try new things (even if he’s bad at something and/or shows little discernible talent), take risks, fall, and get back up. I want him not only to know but also to internalize that it’s not embarrassing to care and try and fail.?

In short: I want him to approach failure differently from me. I’m bad at failure in most senses of the word (I fail at failure…?). I can barely tolerate the discomfort of being bad at something. I rarely voluntarily put myself in a situation where failure is a likely option. I have never acquired the specific discipline of trying and trying, failing, trying again, failing better. I’m terrified of not getting a gold star. I’m embarrassed to show that I want something that is slightly out of reach, only to splat fall flat on my face.?

Instead, I pretend that I don’t care that much. I don’t take the risk of jumping into the deep end. If I’m not trying anyway, I’m in on the joke. And the joke is on me.

I did some digging to discover what I was taught about failure and how to unlearn it. At least I never fail to do my research.??

Psychologists have long studied the nature and consequences of dispositional fear of failure, characterized by Atkinson as “the capacity or propensity to experience shame upon failure.” Fear of failure tends to be higher in women than men, particularly teenagers. (You can see where I’m going with this.) Women also tend to respond less positively to competitive environments, tend to be more risk-averse, and have lower levels of self-efficacy and self-concept than men with similar levels of achievement. What does this mean in practice? In education, fear of failure might lead girls to choose easier courses, spend too much time studying some material, and avoid subjects in which they do not expect to succeed (think about the gender gap in MINT subjects).

These large-N studies can’t tell us exactly how these “failure” gaps develop, but the following feels spot-on. In “The Curse of the Good Girl,” Rachel Simmons writes:?

“To live a Good Girl life is to walk an internal tightrope.? With one's self-esteem tied up in wildly unrealistic expectations, mistakes become emotional free falls, leading girls to question their fundamental self-worth."?

That sounds very familiar. As does this:?

“Good Girl perfection is success with a ceiling.? Its pursuit offers little room for the risk and adventure that yield exhilarating leaps in growth.”?

That tracks. In the 90s, I was a “gifted child” when the label was just becoming mainstream. I was praised for my writing skills and how quickly I could pick up a foreign language (blatant brag: English is my third language). I didn’t have to try at all to do well in these areas, and if I tried harder, I was exceptional. In primary school, I didn’t learn the discipline of sticking with something even if I sucked (although my mother did try to make me play the violin, which … failed.) As a “gifted” child who also lived in the pastor’s house (which meant something, and nothing good, in suburban Switzerland at the time), I was ostracized by the other kids, and the gold star became my identity. I learned – was taught – to focus on the things that came naturally, to play up what I was good at, and I crafted an identity around “being good”.?

When I studied at Wellesley a million (17) years ago, we had an evening speaker series called “My Favorite Failure,” where senior faculty and staff members shared a personal experience of failure. These talks always took place in dorm common rooms, a cozy setting chosen to inspire familiarity and kinship and more often than not involving an actual fireside. The College President or the Dean of Students or a Distinguished Professor of Economics would tell us about a time they got fired from their first job or didn’t get XYZ prestigious fellowship. The underlying message was: I failed at something, learned from it, dusted myself off, and leveraged my new skills and confidence to attain my extremely respectable position eventually. (It was also the stuff of Wellesley lore that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Wellesley Class of ‘59, didn’t hold a "real" paying job until she was in her early 40s).?

Failure is considered acceptable if it’s in the rear-view mirror of someone who has achieved (commercial) success. Frankly, I don’t care?“how overcoming the fear of failure helped Steve Jobs, Tim Ferriss, and Bill Gates succeed.” J.K. Rowling believes that “failure is essential to success”? Good for her, I guess (these days, I would rather not take any life advice from J.K. Rowling). Failure, as seen from the vantage point of success, isn’t messy, embarrassing, or silly; the sting has dulled, and the pain has long gone away.

I’m not interested in sanitized failure. I want to fail at things I’m passionate about without considering future commercial success. I want to try and fail at paths that might lead who-knows-where. I want to fail with abandon, without having it in the back of my head how I could spin a particular failure into a story of overcoming adversity to reach a socially desirable, proper, beyond-your-wildest-dreams successful milestone. That’s what I want to teach my son about failure.?

After thinking about pulling the trigger for two years, I started my newsletter in part to overcome my fear of failure. It’s scary to put yourself out there in writing. I felt ill at ease about my little essays sitting in the ether, alone, unread, mainly because readers could see my subscriber numbers. Who does she think she is? I imagine them whispering behind my back, though if my newsletter was unnoticed, how would they even know about it? Writing about failure feels less embarrassing now that my little newsletter has grown a small readership (hi!!!), and writing this essay only now feels like cheating.??

I want to try something different to advance my relearning process. To that end, let me show you my dirty underbelly of failures and a list of things I might fail at in the future.?

Here’s a list of some of my failures:?

1. Publishing my dissertation as a book or even as an article. By now, someone scooped my idea without citing my dissertation. Now I can’t ever publish it without citing that plagiarist.?
2. Academia
3. Making risotto
4. Not touching my hair all the time
5. Grasping statistics
6. Getting my driver’s license (I didn’t fail the actual test, but at age 36, I’ve failed to get beyond step 1 of getting your driver’s license in Switzerland, a 2-day first-aid course I have now taken four times because the certificate keeps expiring)
7. Making a single piece of pottery larger than a cereal bowl in four years of ceramics practice?
8. Vaginal birth
9. Columbia University POLS4209 - “Game Theory and Political Theory”??
10. The Swiss diplomats’ entrance exam
11. Playing the violin
12. Finding a job in any way related to my field of study (international security) despite literally hundreds of applications and dozens of interviews
13. Getting into a steady/healthy/stable/loving/respectful relationship in my twenties (all the while pretending that “casual” was exactly what I needed at that exact moment)

And here’s a list of things I want to maybe fail at in the future:?

1. Stand up publicly for causes that matter to me (and all of which are also “mom topics”): The fight against climate disaster, massive wealth and power inequality, etc.?
2. Try out podcasting. (Anyone looking for a podcast guest?)
3. Submit more of my writing for publication
4. Make good risotto
5. Be more political in my writing and in my life. The personal is political, and my opinion is valid.
6. Get my driver’s license
7. Make new friends in my late 30s
8. Write and publish a book
9. Judo
10. Go blonde
11. Hike the Camino, the Appalachian Trail, or similar (baby and all)
12. Learn a programming language
13. Write this newsletter every week for a year straight

Let’s unlearn, be vulnerable, and embarrass ourselves a little bit or a lot in public. Who the fuck cares. But I still hope you liked my essay.

You can find more of my writing and subscribe to my weekly newsletter here, if you enjoyed this essay!

Works cited:

Defining failure: Atkinson, J. W. (1957). Motivational determinants of risk-taking behavior. Psychological Review, 64(6, Pt.1), 359–372. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0043445

On "failure" gender disparities: Borgonovi, F., and Han, S. W. (2021). Gender disparities in fear of failure among 15-year-old students: the role of gender inequality, the organisation of schooling and economic conditions. J. Adolesc. 86, 28–39. doi: 10.1016/j.adolescence.2020.11.009 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33302248/

For an overview on gender differences in competitiveness, see: For a summary: Niederle, M. (2017). A gender agenda: a progress report on competitiveness. Am. Econ. Rev. 107, 115–119. doi: 10.1257/aer.p20171066 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20171066.

For the same on risk aversion, see Nelson, J. A. (2015). Are Women Really More Risk-Averse Than Men? A Re-Analysis of the Literature Using Expanded Methods. Journal of Economic Surveys, 29(3), 566–585. https://doi.org/10.1111/joes.12069.

On gender gaps in self-efficacy / self-concept, see Huang, C. (2013). Gender differences in academic self-efficacy: A meta-analysis. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 28(1), 1–35. Scopus. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-011-0097-y

On fragility of performance by gender: Beilock, S. L., Holt, L. E., Kulp, C. A., & Carr, T. H. (2004). More on the fragility of performance: Choking under pressure in mathematical problem solving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133(4), 584–600. Scopus. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.133.4.584