Fab to Fail, and Full Circle

“Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” – C.S. Lewis

“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” – Napoleon Hill

Dear Claire,

I’m glad that my previous letter clarified the importance of discovering your passions and exploring how the narrative of your life’s experiences can help you find your purpose.  

While failure is a part of our common experience as humans, none of us actually looks forward to claiming it as part of our own story.  In fact, I suspect it’s not failure itself which scares us, but more precisely our “Fear of Failure” which stymies our progress. If we spend a little time getting a handle on what’s really going on in our heads — our perception of personal failure, how we define that failure, and how we choose to move past our feelings of failure – we can begin to chart a course toward our ultimate success, and confidence in our life purpose. How we choose to define failure – and success — then, can be the difference between feeling confident in our purpose and following our passions, and succumbing to disappointment and discouragement and losing sight entirely of our goals.

I can certainly relate to your frustration in feeling like a failure; it is definitely a struggle we all face at some point, and I’ve had my share of those moments.  While some of us are more affected than others by the specter of failing — especially at something we value greatly or dream about — the idea of losing an opportunity because we were not prepared, or didn’t work hard enough, or didn’t get the support we thought we deserved, affects just about everyone who’s ever tried anything.  Isn’t it nice to know that you’re not alone?

When I enrolled for my first college writing course as a starry-eyed freshman, I was confident that I was a fairly accomplished writer; since I believed it was my strongest skill, I had no doubt that I would score an easy ‘A’ in the class. As we all found our seats and got settled into the new atmosphere of collegiate study, the surly professor — dressed in black turtleneck and black corduroy slacks (back when it was considered a sign of social introversion and long before it was cool) and sporting a steel-gray Beatles-esque bowl-cut hairdo — swaggered into the room, just as you’d expect from a former Las Vegas blackjack dealer.  As he strutted behind his desk and faced his doe-eyed students, the first words out of his mouth will forever be etched into my memory: “I will staunchly defend every one of my students’ right to fail at least one college class.”

As a high-honors high school student used to skirting the edge of effort and skating through my senior year, I was confident that he was speaking to the other students, and certainly not to me.  After a few false starts and disappointing B’s on my work, however, I suspected that I needed to notch up my efforts to improve my grade, so I delivered what I thought was a well-crafted essay, taking advantage of all the tricks and snappy rhetoric I had learned to apply in high school – which had proved to be successful, by the way.

I was feeling confident that Monday morning as the professor returned our papers. Imagine my shock, confusion, and humiliation when my eyes scanned nothing but red pen scribbles through nearly every paragraph of my work, and a glaring capital ‘F’ stared back at me from the top of the first page!  I was devastated.  But the professor had also scribbled something on the final page which ignited a small flame in my now-humbled soul, challenging me to use that mess-of-a-failure paper as a stepping stone to achieving success: “Your writing has potential to take you far; don’t spoil it by thinking you know all that you need to know.  Keep to the point. Don’t overthink it. Try again and resubmit this to me.” I did, and was more than pleasantly surprised when he returned it to me with an ‘A’ written boldly at the top.

As I look back on that experience, I recognize it today as a defining moment in my writing life. If I had let that failure germinate in my psyche, I would have lacked the confidence to continue writing, or to eventually believe that I had the skills necessary to help others.  Although I don’t remember the professor’s name, I will never forget his words which set me on the path to recovering my writing confidence. 

I also recognize that I spent many years mis-defining the term ‘failure’, and it colored my perspective as well as my ability to get past the lingering doubt in my own abilities. I realized that it wasn’t really the ‘F’ that bothered me; it was what that mark signified. I was embarrassed to tell anyone. I had failed to keep my grade up. What would my parents think?  It unleashed the fear inside, telling me that I wasn’t good enough or clever enough or smart enough to actually become a writer. In my mind I equated it to lack of ability, and lack of value.

When I speak with someone who is struggling with the fear of “what might happen”, I often encourage them to play out the what-if scenario to its inevitable end; if we can work through in our minds the worst-case scenario and actually name our biggest fear, we discover that we can de-fang the fearful beast and see our challenge for what it is: an opportunity to learn valuable lessons and move forward.  Failure teaches us not only what doesn’t work, but more importantly how to move toward finding what will work. Failure doesn’t always happen because we “did something wrong”; sometimes we fail because we didn’t have enough information or training; sometimes it’s because we are afraid of what others will think if we try something new.  As long as we live in the land of “would’a, could’a, should’a”, we will never dare to dream, to live passionately, to ignite the spark of hope in others.

Most people define failure something like this: “an absence or lack of success”.  Instead of defining it as a lack, let’s try shifting our perception and considering that failure might just be the starting point on our path to refining our purpose to keep in line with the passions which drove us to seek new horizons and new opportunities in the first place. 

My son has an interesting take on the notion of failure and success; he suggests that a broader perspective might allow us to see failure as “not meeting the expected outcome or set expectations”, which leads to the definition of success as “meeting the expectations of your own path, and being content in the place where God has you”.  We can view failure as a “forward-moving” force (remember that you are in fact trying to achieve, but you just haven’t arrived yet), and success becomes easier to define in a more personal way.  Changing our definition of failure is the first step in getting better at accepting setbacks and finding our way back onto the road toward our ultimate goals.

Carley Sime, in her article, “Here’s a Better Definition of Failure” (FORBES.com) suggests that “not everything needs to be defined as a success or failure, [and] there is no right or wrong way to define these states” – however, some definitions do more harm than good.  Often, the most productive way is to base the “states” of success and failure on “values”:

• SUCCESS – The state of living and working according to our values.
• FAILURE – The state of living and working in a way that is NOT aligned with our values.

When we know our values, it helps us assess how our definitions of success and failure are affecting how we see ourselves and the world around us.  As long as we pursue our passions according to our purpose, and with the attitude that there is really no such thing as failure, we free ourselves from the self-doubt that questions our intentions, and the fear of failure that had us shackled to the opinions of others fades into the past. We can accept that we indeed do matter to someone, and we can dare to fail, because that is how our dreams become realities. And who knows? You might just “fail your way” to amazing things!

Claire, we have worked our way through understanding our perception of failure as not so much a lack of accomplishing our goals, but a fear of not living up to our own personal values. We defined failure according to those values, and we realized that we can give ourselves grace when we have to regroup and keep moving forward.  The one thing I hope you will take away from this letter is that creating a life of purpose requires experimentation and venturing into unknown territory.  It’s not failure that determines our ability to ultimately succeed – it’s our ability to recover and keep moving forward which brings clarity and re-ignites our purpose.  Don’t let self-doubt or the fear of failure rob you of your joy, your purpose, or the pursuit of your passions. Let failure be “our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” – Denis Waitley

We’ll talk again soon,

Beverly