Fail Your Way To Success

“The difference between the master and the beginner is that the master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.” – Stephen McCranie

Why we fear the inevitable? Why we froze instead of getting prepared to face what cannot be avoided? There is absolutely no way you go through this life without failing.

Fear can be as useful or harmful as we allow it to be, but few things are more paralyzing than the fear of failure.

Some people think that the fear of failure is something we learn at some point when growing up, but I disagree. I believe that the fear of failure is something intrinsic to our nature. We, human beings, crave to succeed in every task we perform, and this is what allowed our ancestors to thrive in the African wilderness. But we have come a long way and in today’s world the repercussions of failing are usually far less lethal that what they used to be. The avoidance of failure is natural, but we have come to the point as a species where we must do whatever we can to nullify this mechanism of preservation or at least we must strive to learn how to deal with failure in a productive manner.

Walk the Line

One of the first challenges we face when growing up is learning to walk. Every human being is driven by nature to stand and take a step as soon as they can. And until this day I have not heard of a little person that have made it on the first try. If you know of a baby that just stood and walked away in his first try, please let me know. I’m sure is a great story.

Learning to walk is the first big fail of our lives, but is so important as human beings that it overrides our natural tendency to avoid failure. I don’t remember how it was for me, but I’m pretty sure it started the same way that for everybody else and it ended quite soon with me crying and confused. This was probably your case too. But you lived another day to try again, and you did. You tried once and again and you failed a lot of times until you finally start to make some progress. And now you are a champion in the art of walking.

How different life would be if after that first big failure you would have just said: “You know what, this sucks! Is hard and it hurts! Besides, people carry me all over the place, why would I need to walk? I think walking is simply not my thing!” Good luck finding someone to carry you now big boy.

Everything else in life that comes after that first failure, and the subsequent success after much trying and failing, is basically the same. Except a few exceptions, you won’t get anything right the first time, and if you do, it is unlikely that you will be consistently right every time. Only experience brings consistency, and in order to acquire experience, you must face failure more than anything else.

One would think that taking into account that there are few things as certain as the fact that we are going to fail a lot throughout our life, we would have learned how to deal with failure by now, right?

Failure is a Good Thing

In other words, you will fail. No matter what you do, you are going to fail a lot. This is something you have to accept and the sooner the better, because there is no way out. And actually, this is a good thing because every time you fail, you are a step closer to your goal (There are a few exceptions, like skydive…).

The only way to avoid failure, is not to act at all. To go through life doing absolutely nothing is the only way to avoid failure, and ironically, this is the biggest failure I could ever imagine.

Allow me to let you know that if you are not failing, you are not trying. Stop avoiding failure, because by avoiding failure, you are avoiding experience, growth and true, stable success. Instead of avoiding it, learn to deal with failure and to turn every fall to your advantage.

Don’t be a Coyote

Don’t be afraid to fail; instead be afraid not to try. And when you fail, dust off and try again.

I remember when I was a kid how frustrated I got while watching “Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner”. The whole life of the coyote was dedicated to catch the road runner and in order to do so, he would buy every single artifact in the Acme catalog. Yet, every time the artifact arrived, and the coyote was ready to use it, something went wrong (usually because the coyote didn’t read the instructions manual) and the whole trap backfired on the coyote. I was frustrated because the ideas of the coyote were actually pretty good and creative, but after the first fail, he threw away whatever he just bought and tried something new, which backfired again. I never understood why the coyote can’t learn from his mistakes and try the same method again, and again, until he could finally catch the road runner.

On many occasions, we are the coyote. We try something, it goes wrong and we quit. We conclude that we are not smart enough, we are not rich enough, we are not pretty enough, or when we run out of excuses we simply conclude that “that is not our thing”.

I am not saying you should be stubborn and get obsessed about every single thing, I am just saying that is important to understand that failure is not a bad thing, but a necessary step towards our goals.

Make Taking Action a Habit

Fear of failure can be paralyzing, particularly after bad experiences. But you must get over your fear and make taking action a habit.

Learn to deal with failure by understanding that fear is not as a warning, but a sign. Fear is part of our emotional guidance system (see Ring the Alarm) and should be used as a tool and not as an excuse.

Get yourself into the habit of taking action as often as you can and particularly when you feel fearful and allow yourself to fail as many times as needed. Congrat yourself every time, because you have come a step closer to your goals.