Failure: Friend of Foe?
I don't know about you, but when I set out to make steps to follow a dream, one of my biggest fears if failure. I am afraid that I'll put my heart and soul into a project only to mess it up. Fail.
In my Senior year of high school, I auditioned for the fall play. (It was the non-musical production of the drama department.) I had high hopes of making it into the play because I had made the play in my Junior year and I if anything, I had learned and gotten better. So, I was sure to make it my Senior year, right? Wrong. I went from a main role in the fall play one year to no role at all the next. Heart-wrenching experience. All sorts of questions about my talents and abilities haunted my mind. I had failed.
I did audition for the Musical the next spring, but I had been too scared of trying out for a lead role. I tried out for ensemble-and made it. Looking back, I wish I would have at least tried for a lead. Because by auditioning for the ensemble only, I had limited myself. Fear 1- Jill 0. :)
Experiences like these were not uncommon to me growing up. I would attempt something, the outcome would not be as I had wished, and I wondered what the point was of 'going on'. Then I would go to my Daddy. Through big, blinding tears I would tell him my deepest fears. He would point out how there was no chance I had actually failed. He would recount my successes of the past, my current talents, and even minimized my perceived failure by pointing out the silver lining-which is always there.
So my Daddy would pick me up, dress my emotional wound, and give me the courage to keep going. I will admit to you, though, the fear of failure still lurks in the shadows of my mind.
Come to find out recently, failure is actually a rite of passage:
Did you know, that James Dyson made 5,127 prototypes of his bag-less vacuum cleaner before he discovered one that worked. For those of you that don't know, Dyson's company is one of the top-selling vacuum companies in the world.
Or that Thomas Edison discovered about 1,800 ways not to make a light bulb before he actually built a functioning one?
I had no idea Walt Disney was fired from a job at a news paper once. The boss said he "lacked imagination and had not good ideas." He also went bankrupt several times before creating Disneyland.
Those are just three small examples. Since I've started to wade into the world of authorship and wordsmithery, I have heard countless tales of authors sending their manuscript repeatedly to agents and editors and getting rejected. Even J.K. Rowling's manuscript was rejected twelve times. (Granted, twelve is a small number of rejections, but it was still rejected.) Imagine if she had stopped after the first rejection? the tenth? even the eleventh?
So, if you feel like you failed, you're in good company. Really good, famous company actually.
The difference between those who realize their dreams and those who don't isn't whether they fail. It's how they fail. Believe it or not folks, there seems to be a way to fail intelligently. As the classic from Chitty-chitty Bang-bang says: "From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success"-- I'm pretty sure that's it.
Seems to me that failing intelligently means learning from your mistakes, adjusting your process accordingly, and continuing forward.
The lesson here? Don't give up. Because, it turns out my third grade teacher was right after all: "you only really fail if you quit."
In my Senior year of high school, I auditioned for the fall play. (It was the non-musical production of the drama department.) I had high hopes of making it into the play because I had made the play in my Junior year and I if anything, I had learned and gotten better. So, I was sure to make it my Senior year, right? Wrong. I went from a main role in the fall play one year to no role at all the next. Heart-wrenching experience. All sorts of questions about my talents and abilities haunted my mind. I had failed.
I did audition for the Musical the next spring, but I had been too scared of trying out for a lead role. I tried out for ensemble-and made it. Looking back, I wish I would have at least tried for a lead. Because by auditioning for the ensemble only, I had limited myself. Fear 1- Jill 0. :)
Experiences like these were not uncommon to me growing up. I would attempt something, the outcome would not be as I had wished, and I wondered what the point was of 'going on'. Then I would go to my Daddy. Through big, blinding tears I would tell him my deepest fears. He would point out how there was no chance I had actually failed. He would recount my successes of the past, my current talents, and even minimized my perceived failure by pointing out the silver lining-which is always there.
So my Daddy would pick me up, dress my emotional wound, and give me the courage to keep going. I will admit to you, though, the fear of failure still lurks in the shadows of my mind.
Come to find out recently, failure is actually a rite of passage:
Did you know, that James Dyson made 5,127 prototypes of his bag-less vacuum cleaner before he discovered one that worked. For those of you that don't know, Dyson's company is one of the top-selling vacuum companies in the world.
Or that Thomas Edison discovered about 1,800 ways not to make a light bulb before he actually built a functioning one?
I had no idea Walt Disney was fired from a job at a news paper once. The boss said he "lacked imagination and had not good ideas." He also went bankrupt several times before creating Disneyland.
Those are just three small examples. Since I've started to wade into the world of authorship and wordsmithery, I have heard countless tales of authors sending their manuscript repeatedly to agents and editors and getting rejected. Even J.K. Rowling's manuscript was rejected twelve times. (Granted, twelve is a small number of rejections, but it was still rejected.) Imagine if she had stopped after the first rejection? the tenth? even the eleventh?
So, if you feel like you failed, you're in good company. Really good, famous company actually.
The difference between those who realize their dreams and those who don't isn't whether they fail. It's how they fail. Believe it or not folks, there seems to be a way to fail intelligently. As the classic from Chitty-chitty Bang-bang says: "From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success"-- I'm pretty sure that's it.
Seems to me that failing intelligently means learning from your mistakes, adjusting your process accordingly, and continuing forward.
The lesson here? Don't give up. Because, it turns out my third grade teacher was right after all: "you only really fail if you quit."
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