Demystifying failure to move forward and be daring

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”
Quote from Wayne Gretzky, one of the greatest hockey players

Failure: the snake that bites its own tail

Most of us have learned to fear failure since childhood. The student who is afraid of failing an exam, the head of a company who worries about bankruptcy, the employee who is anxiously awaiting a promotion, are all examples with a negative connotation.

Yet this negative connotation seems to be changing. The recently published book by philosopher Charles Pépin[1], which shows the virtues of failure, the advent of the “Fail conf” conferences which enable businessmen to share points of view and bounce back after a failure, are all signs indicating that our perception of failure is changing.

Nonetheless the fear of failure is still deeply rooted in our culture. Failure is something we try to avoid; it often restricts risk-taking. Fear of failure can paralyze us and keep us from acting. Such, for example, is case of Lisa who, after spending a few years taking care of her children, does not dare look for a job for which she is qualified for fear of refusal. She accepts modest jobs and, even though she is frustrated, she feels incapable of landing the kind of job that would really suit her. According to psychoanalyst Jacques Arènes, fear of failure is the main obstacle to personal fulfilment.

Failure also engenders the fear of being considered a loser or a good-for-nothing. Yet, as Charles Pépin[2] rightly says, “having failed does not mean that we are a failure”.

Sometimes it is the very fear of failing that makes us fail. The greater our fear of a fiasco, the more we implement strategies to avoid it at any cost (including giving up our objectives). This in turn leads to a feeling of failure. In other words, we create the serpent that bites its own tail!

The first step: accepting who we are

The first step to help us live with our failures (which are inevitable) is accepting who we are. As we explain in our book[3], under certain circumstances it is important to accept our limitations. Failure stems from three sources: firstly, from the fact that we are not perfect, secondly, from risk-taking (for example by participating in a new project or trying a new recipe in the kitchen!) and finally from our inability to predict the future with absolute certainty (a telling example: the gap between the forecasts of the recent US elections and the actual outcome). These three factors sometimes mislead us and consequently we make both avoidable and unavoidable mistakes. In either case, it is useless to find a guilty party, or blame ourselves or slip into denial.

What really matters when faced with failure is understanding the message. As Spinoza says: “I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them”.

Accepting who we are also means avoiding discouragement, self-judgment, taking the time to discover the message conveyed by failure. We will make the same mistake over and over again unless we take the time to think. As Chérie Carter-Scott writes, “a lesson is repeated until learned”[4]. We risk repeating our mistakes, even unwittingly, unless we look at them square in the face.

Understanding also means decoding subconscious messages, as exemplified by Gerald, a middle manager who would like to pass an exam in order to move to an executive position. He prepares extremely well and has all the qualities to succeed. Unfortunately, on the day of the exam he fails miserably. After overcoming his disappointment, he realizes that what he considered a personal ambition was only the desire to prove to his father that he was capable of succeeding, even though in his heart of hearts he didn’t really care.

If we take time to analyze our failures, we discover their benefits. In his book Charles Pépin exemplifies this when he writes: “it’s because they fail that they succeed” and continues by citing examples from several fields (Edison, General de Gaulle) to show how failures can sometimes be constructive and lead to success.

In fact, failure helps us learn and encourages us to analyze what did not work and to rectify our actions before starting again. It is also an excellent opportunity to do some soul-searching and gain awareness on our behavior, our reactions, our strengths and weaknesses. Humility gained through failure enables us to prepare for the future.

Failure is similar to a crossroads…

The crossroads metaphor applies to our reactions vis-à-vis failure. When facing failure, we can choose among several options:

1. Continuing on our usual way while ignoring failure

2. Facing failure yet going back to the path that we usually tread

3. Facing failure and then embarking on a new path with the added risk of making yet another mistake from which we will again learn something, and so on and so forth, until “we have at last learned the lesson”.

Option 1 offers no possibility of learning since, as we already said, the first step to surmount a failure is facing up to it.

Option 2 may depend on external circumstances and a conscious choice: sometimes we see and understand the reasons behind our failures, but we have neither the energy nor the willingness to change our approach, as exemplified by Sandra’s dilemma. Sandra can’t set limits to her work, but, since she is involved in an important project, decides to carry on in spite of the painful burden imposed on her private life. Sometimes we decide to continue on the same path, in the hope of doing better.

Let’s look more closely at option 3.

Changing our way of thinking in order to learn and act differently

Einstein said that “No problem can be solved without changing the level of consciousness that created it”. This means that the second step, after accepting failure, is starting to act differently so as to avoid failing again. Einstein also said: “you never fail until you stop trying.” To act differently, we must give up our convictions, our conscious and subconscious beliefs as well as the kind of behavior that steered us towards failure. This is easier said than done and entails trying something new and therefore risking a new failure[5]. The fact is that if we decide to venture into the road of change, we must also accept making mistakes, just as a child who is learning to walk must fall hundreds of times to activate new muscles that will enable him to walk. Daring to try and making mistakes entails stopping to strive towards perfection and valuing boldness. Thanks to our failures and mistakes we learn to change and thus we move forward.

Conclusion: the paradox of failure

When facing failure, if we get stuck and see ourselves as losers, we will most likely fail again, just like the serpent that bites its own tail. And we also risk failure if we accept it and decide to take a different path, because failure is part of the learning process. Yet the difference between the two instances is essential: the first instance is static and it is a source of malaise while the second one is part of a renewal process and increases our self-learning capacity, which is the source of our resilience vis-à-vis failure. An Indian client who works for a multinational company reminded us about one of the qualities of a true leader, i.e. the courage to fail. If we have that courage, we give ourselves the possibility of moving forward and of helping others move with us.

Article written jointly with Maryvonne Lorenzen