Failure

This one’s been on the boil for a long time.  Let’s see if I can get my thoughts in order

It all started . . . . . .

When I caught part of a Saturday Compilation of Woman’s Hour when the presenter was talking about how traumatic it was for teenage girls when they met failure for the first time at GCSE or A level time.

Which provoked a “Wheesht” of scorn as I considered that “of course, it would be traumatic if their tiny lives until the age of 16, 17 or 18 had been protected from failure of any size, variety or sort”

And when you consider the number of School Sports Days that contort themselves unbelievbly in trying to avoid any child failing at anything.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m all for every child discovering their strengths and the recognition that these strengths may not be the mainstream ones of reading, writing and spelling.  Or in Sports terms – running fast and catching.  For many children, school is a purgatory and it is the responsibility of many parents to nurture their child through this ritual disembowelment until they can go out into the world and thrive.

As an aside how many successful entrepreneurs can you name who did an MBA?  And how many went out and learned in the school of hard knocks.  Sometimes a lack of education and trained thought allows you NOT to see the looming problem and unsolveable.  Remind me to tell you the story of the monkeys, the bananas and the water – otherwise known as the habit virus – sometime.

Back to the story in hand.  Failure

My next encounter with others ideas around failure was with a group studying NLP.  We were going round in a small group of 3 or 4 and explainingour philosophy of life.  There was much about striving, succeeding and perfectionism until it was my turn.  When I said that my philosophy of life was to fail fast and to fail often.  Followed by a jaw-dropped silence.  Made all the more interesting because one of the major pre-suppositions of NLP is that
                                                        “There is no failure, only feedback”

Agile (Google “Agile +software +(development OR delivery) +principles”) has much the same philosophy (Does it come out of the same stable as NLP I wonder?).  One of its core principles is Failure

Agile Principles

Agile Principles

And yet, there is H U G E resistance to failure. 

Serendipitously it has become my way of living.  Accidentally at first, it’s true, and yet like many of those other lifetime bogeys like the dentist and death, close up and personal it’s not as scary as you might at first think.

Actually, I’m OK with the dentist.  Still working on death, I’ll let you know how that turns out . 

Mind you – as another aside – it strikes me that if you read biographies of those mad adventurers who go out and do death-defying things like climb mountains or cross Arctic wastes you will often find an early brush or two with death in their lives that gives them an insouciant approach to life

So I think we eschew and avoid failure at great cost.  Not allowing our children to fail on the primary sports field and then having stories about parents being completely unmanageable on the touchline gives entirely the wrong message to the generations coming along.  Don’t seek failure but manage it well when it happens.  Teach your child to embrace failure at a young age.  It is your imperative as a prent.

Which brings me to a story as recounted by my daughter’s deputy head at her last Speech Day when he was extolling her year’s achievements.

“In the days” he intoned “when American Presidents read books” (his words, not mine for any American readers amongst you ) there was one who said “You Brits.  You fail at every hurdle except the last one”

Which, said the deputy head, showed that to reach the final hurdle, those Brits must have picked themselves up after every failed hurdle and tried again.

Another phrase he used was one apparently used by Churchill during the war – KBO, otherwise known as Keep B*****ing On.  Or “bottom” using the definition “Staying power; stamina. Used of a horse.”

So, I think there is huge advantage in learning from failure.  Learning how to deal with failure.  There and then, in the face of others’ success.  And later on.  Regarding it as a lesson.  Learning that maybe this wasn’t the career, the partner, the education for you.  And, more importantly, seeking the reasons why it wasn’t the right path at that time.  Gaining real and true insight who and what you are.  Reframing it if you want to use an NLP word.

Not something to be ashamed of, to be hidden away in a cupboard and never referred to again.

So go on, I dare you, fail.  Go for something in the spirit of just trying.  Honestly, nobody’s looking.  They’re all trying too hard to be successful

“If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. 
If you aren’t afraid of dying, there is nothing you can’t achieve.”

 

 ~Lao Tzu