Don't Be Too Big to Fail
Three reasons why you should embrace failure, in your life and career as an entrepreneur
Failure is something that no one likes. In this age of bailouts and economic uncertainty, it's also something that nearly everyone tries to avoid at all costs.
But failure is also something that is essential to learning and growing not only as an entrepreneur, but also as a person.
This lesson is something that I have learned both through my experiences and studies, and I wanted to share the three reasons why failure is the best thing that can ever happen to you.
1) Come on...everybody does it
No one gets everything right. No matter how much it seems that other people seem to lead "perfect" lives where everything goes right, the fact is that even the most successful people fail all the time. Few people put it better than the great Michael Jordan, in a recent Nike commercial:
"I missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot...and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life...and that is why I succeed."
Even the greatest basketball player of all time fails. No one is perfect. The only difference is that some people work to correct their mistakes, while others don't. The people in the latter group are the successful ones.
Stop pretending that failure is something to fear, and realize it's something to learn from.
2) Failure is the best teacher
An essential part of success is figuring out what you do best, and focusing on those areas. While many of us think we know what we do best, we are usually woefully deluded.
The curing heat of failure helps bring our egos back down to earth, and gives us a real evaluation of our talents and abilities. Failure tells you that you either aren't as good as you think, that you might want to try something else, or that something is wrong in your approach.
The key is testing, and being unafraid to learn that certain things don't work. As Jeremy Gutsche wrote in his brilliant book, Exploiting Chaos:
"Successful innovators do not get caught up in the turmoil of change. They don’t wait for the world to return to normal. Impervious to the clutter that surrounds them, these vanguards adapt to opportunity. Sometimes they take a buckshot approach, firing off new ideas in multiple directions, hoping that one idea will “hit.” Sometimes, like snipers, they zero in on a specific opportunity. What they do not do is stand still."
3) Failure helps you evolve
Over the history of the world, over 99% of species have gone extinct. This ridiculous failure rate is exactly what helps species evolve.
Natural selection, the cornerstone of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory, is defined as "differential reproduction", or the fact that only certain individuals are successful in surviving and reproducing, while others aren't. Often grossly simplified "survival of the fittest", the true meaning of evolution is that failure is essential to success.
In modern society, we're not Social Darwinists. As philosopher Karl Popper noted, the evolution of human thought is distinct from the evolution of animals because we humans have the ability to distinguish our ideas from our actual existence.
But this evolution still requires failure through the death of inferior ideas.
As I wrote in The American Evolution:
"Just as natural selection works by letting some organisms die, so human selection works by letting some ideas similarly perish. Through this negative force, the evolutionary system can produce positive results...[so] failure is necessary in order to discover what works successfully. Growth - whether as a people or individually - stems from the overcoming of some negative force, and internalizing the lessons that the challenge teaches. As Heraclitus, the great Greek philosopher, aphoristically reminds us, 'The way up and the way down is one and the same.'”
Related links
- Failure is Part of Success
- Failure is always an option
User reviews
Average user rating from: 3 user(s)
| Rating: | 5.0 |
Reviewed by InTheSmixOctober 30, 2009
Top 50 Reviewer
Comments (0)
View all my reviews
Report this review
Dey took er Jobs!
| Rating: | 4.0 |
Reviewed by fireflyOctober 30, 2009
Top 10 Reviewer
Comments (0)
View all my reviews
Report this review
Good luck getting this message out against the lobbying power of large corporations.
| Rating: | 5.0 |
Reviewed by ReeferluvOctober 27, 2009
Top 10 Reviewer
Comments (0)
View all my reviews
Report this review
This is why I keep coming back to this site.
