The Art of Failure

How to fail successfully

Do you ever find yourself shrinking away from a failure, immediately abandoning the area, as though you’re fleeing a crime scene? Why do we do that?

Running away only makes us appear suspect, avoid the inclination to run, instead stay on the scene as an investigative reporter or a detective, like Columbo in trench coat, chomping on a cigar deep in thought searching for clues.

The clues will set you free.

In 2019 I embarked on cross country tour in search of 35 Unicorns, I should explain, Unicorns are ordinary people who do EXTRAordinary things within their communities. The plan was to visit 35 States, run a 5k during the week and half marathon on the weekend. It would be a mini-documentary while driving a Mini Cooper across the country interviewing Unicorns for the BTW Podcast.

After two blown engines, being rear-ended by a pick up truck that totaled the third vehicle, the dream would not become a reality. Nevertheless I persisted! That sounds good, but that’s not the reality.

Was I disappointed?

Yes, I was disappointed and viewed The Unicorn Hunting Project as a public failure.

The only person I shared the failed attempt with was my sister, I felt horribly embarrassed. It was as though I let those who believed in me down, that was the knockout punch. I was hit a few jabs that sent me to the canvas, I didn’t see the first blow coming a long distance relationship ended, in retrospect it makes sense. I kinda anticipated the second jab, it was a rejected PRX Google Podcaster grant application.

I took the full count

I took some time to lick my wounded ego and shake the cobwebs. All of the feelings I experienced during the Unicorn Hunting Project were triggered recently, because my car needed to be taken to the shop, my driver’s license expired and my appointment for the DMV was month out.

Life happens to all of us, but its how we respond that matters; these life events were not failures. I put off airing the Unicorn Hunting Project episode for months — it was too painful to revisit. Mechanical breakdowns and accidents are not personal failures.

Smelling salts of reality

Jeri Villarreal is a real life Wonder Woman. I would say she brings home the bacon and fries it up in a pan, but outside of that being a lazy lame cliche, Jeri’s a Muslim so I’m pretty sure thats not the case; she is a wife mother, writer, Ironman, and a former guest on the BTW Podcast.

Jeri made a poignant post about failure on her Instagram feed and it resonated with me, I’ve been chewing on her words for a minute. Jeri said,

“Remember that time you failed and it hurt so bad that it almost broke you? Then you told yourself that comforting lie to take away the pain, normalize the experience and explain away the painful result. Then, years later, the only thing that you remember is that lie you told yourself. It becomes your truth. It becomes the foundation that you base yourself upon. I’ve made it my mission to dismantle those lies at their foundation by purposefully doing the very thing that created it. By addressing the fear that started it all and overcoming the challenge, the lie falls away because it doesn’t serve me anymore. That is how I make room for success in life. I remove those lies, those fear-based stories It is up to us to change our own narratives.”

Jeri’s words influenced me to jot down a few thoughts on The Art of Failure, How to fail successfully.

Fail is not a dirty four letter word

Failure is not sexy, it’s not attractive, it’s not glamours; most people don’t want to hear about failure. According to Inc. Magazine, 80 percent of us fail to achieve our New Year’s resolutions. Failure is necessary rung on the ladder of success; there’s no way to separate failure from success. Failure is the condiment that adds flavor to the attainment of your goals, it’s the baking powder that causes your biscuits to rise-ok, I’m probably hungry-but you get the point.

Believe me I get the pain attached to public failure, there’s pain in giving birth to your dreams, it’s messy, it’s scary, but don’t stop dreaming. We are conditioned to embrace stories of failures from Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Shaun Carter, Oprah Winfrey or Shonda Rhimes; and, yet we shun our own failures and the those of our family and friends.

Why?

Why are we more obsessed with the end result and not the process? The journey doesn’t seem to matter, that is of course if were able to find a way to monetize the process. Could it be because we’re afraid of what people will think about us? I gave some thought to how people would view my failure, it caused me to be quiet, I took some time to reflect. There’s a quote for every situation and although I had the perfect quote for my predicament, it didn’t change my feelings.

Winston Churchill said,

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without any loss in enthusiasm.”

I started to rethink Churchill’s thoughts on failure especially after I read his thoughts on Indians being savages.

Aversion to failure can make you delusional

In this election season we’re witnessing, in real time what it looks like when you fail to embrace reality. An obsession with power, success, and attention at all cost is dangerous and it has to be a draining having to constinually create narratives in which you always cast yourself as the victor or paint yourself as a victim.

The reality, while it may be hard to face, is necessary if we are to learn from the lesson life is trying to teach us. Failure to learn the lesson will guarantee we repeat the semester.

Failure is an opportunity to learn

According to History.com, Tesla “made dozens of breakthroughs in the production, transmission and application of electric power. He invented the first alternating current (AC) motor and developed AC generation and transmission technology.”

In 1884, Telsa was hired as an engineer at inventor Thomas Alva Edison’s Manhattan headquarters. “At one point Edison told Tesla he would pay $50,000 for an improved design for his DC [direct current] dynamos. After months of experimentation, Tesla presented a solution and asked for the money. Edison demurred, saying, ‘Tesla, you don’t understand our American humor.’ Tesla quit soon after.”

Telsa was a genius, but he was not a shrewd businessman. It doesn’t matter how much you know or how grand your vision, if you can’t get people to like you and buy into your vision you may suffer Telsa’s fate. Just as failure is part of success, learning how to win friends and influence people is an integral component.

The key take-away for me was, nothing great was every accomplished alone, sure I could’ve have drove across the country alone, stopping along the way, but how much more impactful would the experience would be if it could be shared with others.

Lessons from failure

Paul Orfalea, nicknamed Kinko because of his curly hair founded Kinko’s in 1970, In 1996 I had no idea what a Kinko’s was when I started working the graveyard shift in Hauppauge, NY.. An early copyright lawsuit caused Kinko’s to change their business model, they weren’t crippled by the lawsuit.

In 1982 a string of mysterious deaths took place in Chicago claiming the lives of six people. Early October of 1982, investigators made the connection between the poisoning deaths and Tylenol. At the time Tylenol was the best-selling, non-prescription pain reliever on the market; rather than run and hide Johnson & Johnson played an active an active role with the media issuing a mass warning and pulling 31 million bottles off the shelves.

Executives at Johnson & Johnson acted quickly and decisively, introducing new tamper proof bottles, which later become the industry standard.

Sitting shiva

Stacy Abrams suffered a public defeat in Georgia, to Brian Kemp. Abrams told Vogue in September 2019, “I sat shiva for 10 days. Then I started plotting.” Abrams shifted her attention to something vitally more important than her feelings: saving American democracy. Abrams established two non-profit organizations, Fair Count and Fair Fight Action, to that end she registered 800,000 new voters in Georgia.

Failure builds GRIT and resilience

Angela Duckworth wraps up her book, GRIT THE POWER of PASSION and PERSEVERANCE, with a few thoughts from the journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates’ characterization of failure. Coates said, in his three-min video posted on the MacAuthor website, “Failure is probably the most important factor in all of his work. Writing is failure. Over and over and over again.”

After being fired from Time Magazine, he packed on a 30 lbs, and was banging his head agains the wall, but nothing was coming out. His wife was supportive of him and he even considered driving a cab at one point.

Duckworth said Coates offed the best description of what it’s like to write that she’s ever heard and then laid his words out as a poem:

The challenge of writing

Is to see your horribleness on page.

To see your terribleness

And then to go to bed.

And wake up the next day,

Ant take that horribleness and that terribleness,

And refine it, And make it no so terrible and not so horrible.

And then go to bed again.

And come back the next day,

And refine it a little bit more,

And make it not so bad.

And then to go bed the next day.

And do it again,

And make is maybe average.

And the one more time,

If you’re lucky,

Maybe you get to good.

And if you’ve done that,

That’s a success.

Closing thoughts

You are not your failure, you might have failed in the past and chances are if you stay on this planet you will experience failure in the future. There is no shame in failing, the shame is living a safe life, never trying to push yourself beyond your comfort zone.