I think we have “failure” and “success” upside down. No, really. I’d go as far as saying that what we value as conventional success is a form failure and what we associate with failure is actually a measure of success. This, of course, sounds counterintuitive and it is nonsensical until we take a step back to re-examine the meaning we’ve attributed to these terms. Both, success and failure, are words that are wide open to subjective interpretation. What A thinks is success, B could consider failure. In fact, many great artists and writers have taken their own lives over what they considered failure even when their contemporaries deemed them among the best in the world. Although most of us are not as blinded to reality as those poor souls, we do tend to have rather unexamined notions about success and failure based on our societal conditioning and this is a certain kind of ‘blinding’ or brainwashing even.
Theodore Roosevelt famously said,
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
But what if it wasn’t even about having the courage or moral aptitude to face and endure failure? Maybe the real failure is not trying. Maybe the real failure is not having the courage to discover your own unique idiosyncratic self with all its gifts and follies and to then express it into the world in some way. And maybe the act of doing this is far more remarkable than not doing it, regardless of outcome. As a society, we are so superficial when we automatically think of success as a straight-line path to the top without any dips. John had perfect grades in school, he went on to become valedictorian, he studied at an Ivy league school and then joined the best company and climbed the corporate ladder. At every stage, we look at John with jaws on the floor and hearts in our eyes! Every mother uses him as an example to her son. John gets the perfect wife and the perfect life [Of course, this is a gross generalization based on the assumption that he hasn't taken many risks and hence not experienced more than the basic minimum amount of inevitable failure].
What I’ve begun to see (and now that I see it, I can’t believe it took me this long) is that John isn’t truly happy. Ever. Not really, not deeply. John lives with a lot of fear – from never having dared, risked, failed and survived it to know that the failure was never who he was in the first place. We all have this secret fear deep inside – no matter how attractive/successful/rich/famous we are, that maybe we are not quite good enough. This slight undercurrent of insecurity is like the background noise of our existence. Most often we dull ourselves into a routine and get so used to this noise that we can tune it out. But when something unexpected occurs it usually comes into the foreground. When we live with the noise in the background, it keeps that fear alive. We are not free. We can have a seemingly perfect job, spouse and life, but we’re hopelessly dependent on one or many of these external things to drown out the noise. If we’re not using one of those then we may turn to alcohol, food, work, television, sex, shopping or any other addiction.
So does that mean we don’t aim for success at all? I think the real answer is that we need to raise the bar for success – to equate it to happiness. And real happiness can only come from expressing your real self in the world – putting your art out there, creating music, writing stories, starting your business, studying what you love, following your dreams in any way. And if you do this, no matter how talented you are, you will fail. You will fall flat on your face, you will be criticized, you will face rejection and it will hurt. And if you haven’t had these experiences then you’re not aiming high enough. Every great person in history is a testament to this. And what makes them great is the failure or at least what they’ve gained from it. I highly recommend this path because:
1) When you fail, you have to face that niggly fear about your self-worth and the priceless lesson you learn is that not only was that fear unwarranted but that it was never up to anything external to determine your worth anyway!
2) Now that you’re free of the fear of failure, you learn to derive joy from the effort and the process rather than focusing solely on the outcome.
3) When you do this, you will realize that anything you ever called happiness before was not the real thing.
4) It humbles you and makes you realize how big a role chance or grace plays in life.
5) It opens you to connect to others in a deeper way, needing support or help and makes you really appreciate the brave and kind people who’ve been through the same thing. [Warning: It can also make you feel quite bored of the people who are still caught up in their egos and fears].
And this is why I say “failure” is “success” is because if you change the measure stick of success to happiness, then failure is a necessary component to learn real happiness.
I lived 31 years of my life avoiding failure, using success as an umbrella whose sturdy structure and certainty provided comfort and safety. But recently, when I started putting myself out there to “fail”, I felt like someone had taken the shackles off me. I felt truly free for the first time. Contrary to common sense, my self-esteem sky-rocketed. I felt truly invincible because I realized that the only way my self-expression can fail is when it’s not happening! If I identify my gifts, work hard at them and put them into the world then no matter how many times I “fail”, it’s not failure. It’s just learning. And it’s an integral part of “taking off”. Why do we even use this word “failure”? It’s like we are implying something else was supposed to happen. Even the dictionary defines failure as “lack of success”. Instead of thinking of it as what “shouldn’t have happened” what if we just call it needs more learning or not ready yet? Can you imagine if a baby bird was learning to fly and every time it flapped its little wings and fell down it experienced this as “failure” – this big dramatic word. Just thinking of this failure would prevent the little bird from taking it in stride and realizing that the current circumstance is just a necessary learning for the process of taking off. And then we truly succeed!
No amount of success has ever felt as liberating or nourishing to my soul as the sheer willingness to put myself into the world and stare squarely into the face of failure. I sincerely wish that you all dare greatly and fail joyfully! If you keep flapping your wings, you are bound to take off. What else can happen?!