Self Improvement

For a very small number of people the fear of failure can be a very powerful motivation. Often when you look at people who are very, very driven in business and politics, (I noticed David Cameron recently say this) they'll sometimes say that it was the fear of failure that kept them going, pushed them to achieve. Actually, though, for most people the fear of failure is not constructive. It's actually something that stops us from doing things, from taking the action that we want to take, taking the steps, because for most people, sometimes we'd rather not do something than try, and fail.

If you look at successful people, whether it's great parents, Scientist of the Year, business people, entrepreneurs or famous successful people like Bill Clinton or Nelson Mandela, you find sometimes a common approach to failure, which is they don't see it as failure, they see it as feedback. When you read business leaders' biographies you often hear them say stuff like 'I get 50% of decisions right and 50% of decisions wrong' but they're good at knowing what's wrong and doing something about it. They reckon that a big cultural difference between the U.K. and the States is that if you've had five failed businesses in the States you are an entrepreneur, if you've got five failed business in the U.K. you're a loser. Peter Jones the guy from Dragon's Den had a business when he was twenty five years old, his first business, and he was bankrupt by the time he was twenty nine. J. K. Rowling was famously rejected by nine different publishers. Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper because he was told that he lacked imagination.

For fun try and guess who this guy is. In 1831 he lost his job, in 1832 he was defeated running for Illinois State Legislature, in 1833 he failed in business, in 1835 his fiance died, in 1836 he had nervous breakdown, in 1838 he was defeated running for Illinois House Speaker. 1843 he was defeated in his run for nomination to the U.S. Congress, 1848 he lost a re-nomination, in 1849 he was rejected for Land Officer position. In 1854 he was defeated in a run for the U.S. Senate, in 1856 he was defeated in run for nomination for Vice President, in 1858 he was again defeated in a run for U.S. Senate... in 1860 he was elected President of the United States of America... did you guess? It's Abraham Lincoln.

The history people how have achieved remarkable things is littered with them having tried things and failed and actually their approach to failure, their knowledge that there is no such thing as failure only feedback, has been one of the things that has been instrumental and very healthy in helping successful people to move forward. It is, of course, something that applies to all of us. If we get out of our heads this idea that failure is a bad thing and we get comfortable with the idea that if we are going to make steps forward, if we are going to try and get what we want in our life, we are going to have to do some stuff. We are going to have to try some stuff, then when we do fail we go "ok, that's almost inevitable, sometimes I'm gonna fail. What did I learn, what's interesting?"

There's a lovely quote from a guy called John Burroughs which is "a man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else." This idea, that so long as you take responsibility for what's happened, for what's gone wrong, then you are not a failure, you are someone who is learning and moving forward. But as soon as you start to blame someone else, blame circumstances "it wasn't me, it wasn't my fault" then you start to become a failure. So it reminds us to keep off that and keep our attention on being comfortable with the idea that sometimes things won't work and being good at going, "ok that didn't work, as it hasn't for so many people before me, but I know that a fundamental of getting what I want is the ability to fail and then go again."

So try and feel comfortable with the idea that if you try and do something interesting, difficult, important to you, you will occasionally fail but you don't have to feel bad about it, 'cos all the best people fail - that's why they're the best people!

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Thanks and see you there
Stuart