Leaning Into Failure: What are You Making it Mean?

Failure as Learning…

I had a great discussion with a client this week about how to be more innovative, and the discussion took us in the direction of failure.

Failure is learning,

he said.

I hear this a lot, someone making a positive out of something that actually doesn’t feel that great.

Oh it could be a lot worse!

Ever tell yourself that?

When what’s actually true is that ‘it’, in this moment, feels really shitty but you don’t want to come over as someone who feels sorry for themselves.

I get that. I don’t want to be that complaining person so I sometimes underplay my bad feelings, my ‘failures’, as I might call them.

There’s a difference, however, between wanting to over-share and allowing myself to actually feel what feels true—admitting that sometimes life trips us up, and we experience physical or emotional pain.

And yes, sometimes there’s a learning point, but sometimes it’s simply worth admitting that a shitty thing is a shitty thing,

Gosh, that’s taken the wind out of me. Give me a moment to take a breath before we move on.

Why Does Failure Have to Mean Anything at All?

As my client and I went deeper, we looked at why some things are a ‘real disaster!’, some things are simply a small thorn in the way of an otherwise good day, and some things really do feel like learning—we’re almost glad they went wrong.

When does it feel most problematic?

I asked him.

It’s when it’s high stakes,

he told me.

Yes, but what is ‘high stakes’?

Why do we see some things as critical, and others as relatively unimportant?

And why might this change from person to person or event to event?

We naturally make up stories about the time, the relative risk involved, the money it might cost us, never to be seen again, or some other loss we might incur. Most often, though, it comes down to,

And I’ll feel bad…

Most times, when dig underneath what it is we’re trying to prevent, and therefore why we’re making failure mean anything at all, it’s because we’re trying to avoid a sense of feeling bad; a sense of feeling like a failure, feeling less than, feeling like we let ourselves, or someone else down… a feeling that isn’t, well all that nice to experience.

How Bad Can It Be?

My husband and I went paddle-boarding a few weeks ago. I’ve been suggesting this for years but he isn’t a strong swimmer and he tells me that water hosts a seething mass of sea (in this case lake) creatures waiting to strip the flesh off his toes. I know he’s (mainly) joking and since he finally agreed because he thought I’d like it, I allowed him to agree because I thought he’d enjoy it.

Despite his reservations, I thought it would be fun and something we could laugh about over tea and cake on our way home (it was and we did).

Anyway, what was the worst that could happen? That we’d get a little wet? I knew there was nothing larger or more dangerous than a small pike lurking under the water of our local lake.

Which is hardly the point because most of what we make ourselves anxious about isn’t the actual falling and getting wet, it’s those imagined creatures and all the pain and suffering that might come as a result.

What if You Just Let Yourself Fall?

It was an unexpectedly windy day and we were the only paddle-boarders on the lake. The instructor’s final words as we pushed off were,

Stay loose and don’t stiffen up!

She’d also told us to stay kneeling until we reached the ‘wind shadow’ on the other side of the lake. So we did.

When we got over to the other side, we saw a group of teenagers launching themselves off their boards into the water, and then climbing back on, only to (semi-intentionally) wobble off again.

I knew I’d likely fall in but decided to stand anyway. Hubby stayed kneeling. Seeing the teenagers falling in had only increased his reluctance to get up and have a go.

It’s one of those typical scenarios we’ve all experienced where we know in our head that trying to avoid the thing we’re scared of will make it more likely for that thing to happen. Holding the tension of not wanting to fall creates a lack of balance and an inability to self-correct, which means…

…splash, we’re in the water, we’ve wobbled off the bike, or the skis, or whatever it is we’re trying to master.

Hubby knew the only thing holding him back was himself but, still, but he couldn’t quite overcome his fear of falling enough to stand up and have a go. I get it, it was a chilly day, windy, a murky lake with who knows what beneath the surface…

As we drove home, I thanked hubby for tolerating the paddle-boarding and asked whether he’d ever go again.

You know,

he replied,

I wish I’d allowed myself to fall in. Because then I’d have been able to stand up without worrying so much. Next time we come I’m going to get it over with and fall in, like those kids. How bad can it be??

Protecting Someone We Love

The discussion with my client moved on to how much he allows, and whether or not he encourages his team to fail.

I could see that he personally held failure lightly, but there was a part of him that wanted his staff to experience success—and only success; he wanted to protect them from ‘failure’.

But why?

If he knew it was the office equivalent at getting a bit wet at the lake, why wasn’t it OK to allow his staff to fall in?

If falling is an essential part of learning—something we have to experience to get better, something that’s an inevitable part of trying new stuff, then why do we feel such a strong desire to protect someone from it?

As we talked he could see that because some of his staff equated failure with disaster, and that falling in the water would be a worse experience for them than it would be for him, he realised that, rather than allow them to ‘fail’ in a safe environment, the paddle-boarding equivalent of a warm swimming pool perhaps, he’d been trying to protect them from any experience of feeling bad. Because he could see that, to them, it was meant something different than it did to him.

My client hadn’t quite seen that his staff are actually OK, that it’s quite safe for them to get a little wet, that their stories about the water exist in their imagination rather than in reality, and that helping them to see that is what will create a more innovative team, ready and willing to ‘fail’ as they play with new ideas.

It was exactly like hubby and his dislike of all things involving deep water. I know he’s safe, and he knows, deep down, that he’s actually OK, he just experiences a little imagined fear.

Falling does not equate to failing.

Unless that’s what you make it mean.

Failure is Neutral

Here’s the thing about failure…

…we don’t need to make it a disaster, just as we don’t need to make it a positive, and call it learning.

When we make nothing at all out of it, when we treat it like it’s part of the game—like we’re learning to dance or when we’re playing jenga, then we’ll find it hurts a lot less.

Feeling Alive…

When we allow ourselves to feel the pain, great or small, and we know that it’s the experience that makes us who we are, not the meaning we assign to it, then we’re on our way to being the most powerful at what we do, the most supportive leader, the most loving parent.

Yes, give someone the time they need to feel bad, to moan and groan and give them space to see for themselves that they might be taking it a little too seriously.

Comfort and support your staff, friends, family when they get knocked by life, but also see in them their capacity to get better and to move forward, for their natural buoyancy to rise up again, to continue with life—because that’s when you’re allowing them to fall without failing.

Protecting someone from falling isn’t helpful unless you can also help them see that falling down is part of learning to walk.

What we label ‘failure’ is part of the process of doing anything—especially something new or something complex, and allowing ourselves, and others, to fully experience the falling over part is where true growth and learning will come from.

And it’s part of life.

Like paddle-boarding. You can hold yourself stiffly and never get to a standing position, or you can experience falling into the water and realise it might not be as bad as you thought. Or it might be exactly as bad as you imagined but you get back on the board anyway because it’s exhilarating, and because you want to.

And what could be more life-affirming than that?

When we see that falling is part of life, and that failure exists only in our mind, then we’re better equipped for whatever comes our way.

We can’t always protect ourselves or others from tripping, from feeling hurt, from getting wet. But we can help them dry off and feed them real or metaphorical tea and cake, laugh about a shared experience and whether it’s one we want to repeat.

To fully embrace life, maybe we should all create more opportunities to fail; more chances to loosen up and feel the freedom that comes from not believing in those imaginary sea creatures in our head. Maybe we’d feel more alive more of the time; even if that does mean getting a little cold and wet along the way.

Wouldn’t that be fun?

With love,

Cathy