Failure

Even seeing or hearing the word conjurs up a negative thought. Why is that? As babies and toddlers we have no concept of the label ‘failure’ or ‘success’, we just ‘do’ until we achieve what we set out to achieve. But as a baby we don’t even set out to achieve, as in we don’t say to ourselves ‘today I’m going to learn to walk’. Becuase we have no defined target we have no expectation so there is no ‘failure’ when we fall down for the 100th time. Yes, it’s tiring, yes, it’s frustrating, but we persevere.

For me the reason that failure is so impactful growing up is that society and ‘the system’ looks down on failure. School rewards achievement, not effort. We attach failure to who we are, ‘I’m a failure’. It all comes back to ego. In the past I would avoid anything if there wasn’t 99% chance of success, a comfort zone where I wouldn’t hurt. I’ve learnt that we don’t learn from success, taking the easy path is rarely ever the most rewarding, or where we grow the most.

I love the quote from Batman begins – ‘Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up again.‘ Taking the story of how batman evolved through the film, we see multiple failures whilst he perfects his suit/equipment.

What stops me trying something new? Fear! Fear of what? Failure!

Looking around at the ‘successful’ people, whether that be sport, business, life, and so on, they have all failed many, many times. The natural world doesn’t have these labels and feelings attached to them. I recently watched a spider repairing a web that must have taken hours to make. It just got on with it.

I’ll touch on another topic as it’s related, purpose. I think one of our purposes on this planet is to learn and grow. This goes hand in hand with failure, in my opinion.