Judging by the popularity of this blog you would think people find it acceptable to fail. Our society is so geared up to succeed that it often forgets that failure is a part of life. We fail in all kinds of areas regularly. We fail at work, we fail at home … we even fail in between work and home!

Why is it good to fail?

I think society needs to relax. We are so geed up about getting good success that we forget that failure is often a very big part of success. How do you know what works unless you fail first! I have handed over money more time that I have had hot dinners on ideas that I thought would make me money. Guess what… FAIL!

Failure is a good thing

Failure is not the end but the beginning. A friend of mine puts it this way. If you fail… reflect on why and milk the fail for all it’s worth. Extract the lessons, reflect and say … when the next opportunity comes I will not fail in that area AT LEAST. Take a look at history there are FAILs galore. Lincoln is probably the most failed president in history… he missed out many, many times before he got the job.

You should love the moment of failure… although you probably don’t

If nothing else failure should produce in you a great desire for success. If it doesn’t then you probably didn’t fail hard enough. I have failed hard. Sure, I spent six months in deep depression. And still at times I am plagued with self-doubt. Now however, I have a deep desire for success. I want to win and be a winner because failure has taught me the value of success. I will let you think about that. And if you are in the mood leave a comment on your experiences on failure to talk about and we can compare FAIL stories.

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I have heard it said that success is a matter of hard work. Hard work is definitely a matter that relates to success (there will be hard work… I am sure) BUT is it the only thing that assures success? Let’s take an example of my favourite entrepreneur… Richard Branson. Compare Richard Branson to yourself. You work hard like him? If this was the way success is measured then you should be as rich as he is… but you are not. Are you?

Let me extend this question and ask you if you could work harder would it bring you success? Probably not. You may be working hard at a job that has limited prospects (like I am at the moment) or you may be someone who has endless potential. My great aunt could play the piano by ear for example. She had one lesson in her entire life and could hear any piece and then play it back knowing intuitively where to put her fingers. She never became a famous musician, neither did she go on to become the world’s greatest piano player. She died.

She had a natural inclination to music that was freakish yet she never stepped out of her world to do anything more. I think success is a matter of conceptualisation. What you think you have to do in order to obtain it, ironically, is what you will do in order to obtain it. I cannot speak beyond this point because it would make me a hypocrite. What about being in the right place at the right time… *coughs* Digital Research DOS… *coughs*.

So what can we do to obtain success? I don’t know. But what I can tell you is this… if hard work is the only thing that brings success then I would be a billionaire eight times by now.

In our culture we celebrate success and mock failure. This is a tragic mistake because there is more to be learned from failure than there is to be learned from success. One of the greatest things you can learn from failing is that sometimes your best wasn’t good enough.

Failure is a kind of success

The world is full of judgments. People expressing unkindness towards one and another for the sake of personal gamesmanship. We praise those that have made it and isolate and ridicule those that didn’t. Have a successful life means a lot of failure. Most of the time your best won’t be good enough. If your best was good enough every time then you must be God. Or you are just really lucky. I have an Uncle like that. He always seems to land on his feet. Failure, in his case, is just the next step to success. People that think this way, embrace failure, endure defeat because they have gained the knowledge they need to win next time round.

If at first you fail, fail again

A person who knows the power of failure knows the power of success. You may not realise it but you are a failure. That’s the best thing you can be. When you fail, you learned something. A man I admire once told me about a failure I had in business, ‘how much did it cost you?’ I thought about it. It had cost me a lot of money. I told him the amount and he said, ‘That’s not that expensive is it? It’s just how much it cost you to learn what not to do.’ Of course, you can be perfect. But where’s the fun in that? Fail, for it you don’t you just haven’t taken enough risks yet.

Learning why your best wasn’t good enough

The key to extracting lessons from failure is what I would call an ‘action learning’ methodology or what educators call the plan-do-reflect cycle. When you have a plan, you do it, if it fails you collect the lessons and start again. Here is a visual map of the cycle in action:

People who fail love this cycle.  Why?  Well if you know that life is a learning process you won’t be afraid to try something because it might fail.  You probably will fail at some point but it’s what you learn that makes you better for the next adventure.

To be successful requires an attitude that is always looking to learn and grow.  A failure to do either results in what I call true failure: to do nothing and complain about everything.  It’s so easy to sit and point the crooked finger at those trying new ideas.  When they invariably succeed we love cutting people down.  Ask yourself this question: what did they learn that enabled them do that?  The answer might surprise you.

When I left school I had a very bad overall position score (SAT equivalent). So bad that I am not going to tell you how bad it was. Some people know and they may spill the beans but I won’t. Let me just put it this way. In my final year I had eight subjects (let’s say) and I failed six of them. I did so bad that I got the fourth worse score you could get at the time. I was devastated.  Now I am a lecturer.  Remember… if you fail it’s not the end.  Here’s why.

You can come back from anything … except death

As Frank Sinatra said, ‘When I fall down flat on my face, I pick myself up and get back in the race… that’s life!’  You are never so down that you can’t get up.  I know that some people think that a setback is the end.  It’s not.  I can tell you from my life experience that a bad result at school doesn’t mean the end.   What it means for you is that you may have a harder road than most as you pick yourself up BUT you will be all the better for it.   Those that have success without really trying learn a different sort of failure later on.  But that’s another topic. Unless you’re dead, gone and done get up and start again.

If you fall that means you can get straight back up

A man I have come to admire is my father.  That man has had more setbacks than anyone else I know.  Yet whenever he makes a mistake or does something stupid he turns it into an opportunity.  This may sound like a cliche but your greatest mistake so far, can be turned around into your greatest victory.  When I got my bad score I had real sook (as we say in Australia).  But, I realised after a while that life was happening and I needed qualifications to do something to make money.  So I found the worse college in Queensland and enrolled.  The college was so bad that my score was the cut off point!  What if I decided to take no action… I would not be where I am now.  Sure, I’m no millionaire but I am employed by a University Full Time and I handed in some revisions for my PhD thesis last week.  In April (God willing) I will be a doctor.  That’s another post for another day BUT if I can do it, so can you.

So what’s your choice going to be?

Life is full of losers.  Don’t be one of them.  Being a winner takes guts, faith, determination and courage but most of all it takes heart.  When life kicks you in the doodads you have two choices.  You either wind up what you’re doing and go home or you take a lesson from Steve Waugh (a great leader and a former captain of the Australian Cricket Team):

It doesn’t matter how pretty you look it’s how many runs you get. 

In other words: Get up and build a better life.  It’s my prayer that if you read this you will take what I have said to heart and begin to get up, dust yourself off and go on to glory.  I know you can do it.