Understanding Failure
We are coming up on 9 years at 7 Cups. I have had the privilege of working with many extraordinarily talented people throughout this journey. One thing that continues to come up is a fear of failure.
This fear surfaces in thoughts/feelings/reactions like:
-I’m afraid this won’t work
-I don’t want to try too hard because it might not work
-People will think I’m dumb or stupid if this fails or doesn’t work
-If I do this and it fails, then it’ll be more evidence that I’m a failure
-This person will be mad at me if this doesn’t work
-I don’t really want to be honest with myself because I’m afraid of the results
-Let me put the best image forward and hope that nobody sees the part that I’m not proud of (cleaning the room by hiding the dirty clothes in the closet idea)
I tried to get at some of this in the We Are Not Our Mistakes post. I wanted to unpack things a little further in this post.
1. Understand the Starting Line - Remember that we all have different starting lines in life. If your parents divorced, then you take 2 steps back from the starting line. If you experienced abuse or trauma, then you take another 2 steps back. On the other hand, if your parents went to college, then you can take 2 steps forward. If you did not have to worry about food or clothing, then you take 2 steps forward. The further back we start, then the more we have to overcome in life. Some challenges can seem easy to people that start further ahead, because they have less internal pain or noise to sort through. When thinking about how challenging something is in life, make sure you keep this context in mind. You do not want to discount yourself for any extra weight you are carrying. We all still have to run this race called life - and the key at 7 Cups is we share one another’s burdens - but we should keep in mind that some of us are carrying more on our shoulders than others.
2. Assess the Difficulty Level and Understand that More Challenging Things Require More Failure or Mistakes to Master - Life gives us different challenges that we need to master. Some are pretty easy. Others are more difficult. It can be helpful to accurately diagnose the size of the challenge so that you do not feel bad about failing along the way. I try to categorize challenges as Easy > Mildly Difficult > Moderately Difficult > Very Difficult.
Here is an example from my life. Being a first time parent is Difficult. The second, third, or fourth time is easier because you have more experience. I gave myself more failure/mistake coupons with my first kids than my later kids, because I had less experience (less failures to make) than I did with my 3rd and 4th kids. It is almost like a the start we should say, “okay this project is going to require 100 failure coupons” so we don’t feel so bad when we burn through a dozen of them in a month. Instead, we know, okay failure is going to be an integral part of this process and is expected.
Here is an example we all share. 7 Cups is a free emotional support platform with a lot of moving parts (members, listeners, leaders, therapists, messaging, growth paths, community etc.). We’ve all been working on it for 9 years now. To start, it was Very Difficult. It is still somewhere between Mildly Difficult to Moderately Difficult, but it is a world easier than it was for the first several years (I’m getting plenty of sleep now, which was not the case in the early years of my twins or 7 Cups!) Collectively, we have figured out a lot along the way. I have given myself and all of us A LOT of room for failures and mistakes. I still have dump trucks full of not yet spent failures and mistakes to make - because the overall project is Very Difficult. It requires truckloads of failures and mistakes to figure out.
Accurately diagnosing the challenge of the task is key. The more challenging, the more mistakes/failures you should expect because they are the main way we learn. It is necessary to make a lot of failures/mistakes with Difficult and Very Difficult Challenges.
3. Understand the Messy Middle - most challenging things look like the below journey of building a company. Getting married, having kids, going to college/graduate school, starting a new job etc. You start with this great vision and then reality hits. Then, for most of us, you have to grind through ups and downs to make progress. When your baby isn’t sleeping and you are struggling it is very difficult. Then, with time, you figure things out and make more gains. Or, if you are just starting a relationship, then you start to see how different you are and how much you irritate one another, then, with time, you figure out how to accept and support one another.
The key take home is that all learning processes are composed of ups and downs. Celebrate the ups! High fives all around. Endure the downs. Realize in your bones that the hard times will pass, that you’ll figure out what you need to learn to get to the next up. Riding a bike includes gliding down a hill, but it also includes crashing into things. That is how you learn how to ride a bike!
4. Failure and Mistakes Make You Tough - Each failure makes you a bit tougher. Nietzsche’s comment that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is true. And being resilient or having grit is a core value of 7 Cups because it is a core part of what is needed for personal and collective growth. The world is becoming a more challenging place. Learning how to recover and get back on track, knowing how to take a hit and continuing to keep going, is going to become an increasingly important skill to learn. Failure helps you get tough and become more resilient if you optimize your next steps based on what you have endured.
5. Keep Track of Your Wins! - Whenever we are going through a failure or a tough time it can be easy to put on blinders and only see that one mistake. It is important to zoom back over your life and see all the wins and successes you have had. These can be small victories - like I took a walk today - or larger accomplishments like finishing a year of school. Remind yourself of your wins to help you power through the failures.
And remember: you only really fail if you give up!
What has helped you learn how to overcome failure or mistakes? These can be little or big things. I’d like us to get a greatest hits list together of exercises in a growth path so we can all learn how to grow stronger through our mistakes. Please share thoughts and ideas below!
This is a truly inspiring post @GlenM I've been with 7 cups for 7/8 years now and it has been amazing to see it grow! I really needed to read this today so thank you for the important reminder that it's important to fail, learn and celebrate the wins! Thanks for all that you do here!
Lou x 💙
@Lou73 Thank you for being a long-standing member of our community! And I'm very glad the post was helpful. Was there anything in particular that was helpful? We want to highlight the best parts for other uses down the road. Thanks again!
Thanks @GlenM ☺️
I particularly loved the description of the starting line and also the idea of having failure coupons and that we might use more at the beginning because we're learning and how that idea might make it easier to try new things
@Lou73 Thanks Lou! I like that failure coupon idea too. I was thinking of them as slips or passes - imagining them on like monopoly money paper. And like at the start of something- parenting, a long-term relationship, a startup etc - you issue yourself X amount of failure coupons with the full knowledge that you will likely burn through them. Does that help strengthen the idea? How do you imagine them?
@GlenM
Thanks for sharing!
I do two different things, as much as I feel capable of. It's not always so easy, but...
1. I see everything as training. There's always going to be more in front of me, and there is no mastery where learning doesn't exist. I try to keep that in mind.
2. I try to laugh about it. Like, literally (not simply just finding the humor in it). To explain, I'll put it this way, I'm a gamer that's low-key notorious for at least trying the hardest challenges in a game... That involves a lot of failure. My best strategy, when I can, is to immediately and purposely laugh, often even before I even have time to find any humor about what happened, because I know it will help me process things in a better way. I can't always apply it to everything in life, but it's a tool, and I'm sharing in case it can help anyone else.
@Torean Those are two great points to keep in mind and try. Thank you for trying to do it and sharing it with us as well. We definitely on a learning path.
@Torean these are super smart ideas! I like the idea of the student mindset throughout life. Reminds me of that saying, the more you know the more you realize how much you do not know.
I hadn't thought of the idea of purposefully laughing in the face of failure, but I like it. It would change your mindset, much how smiling helps you start to feel better. For both of these, how would you write them up to instruct someone else to do them?
@GlenM
I'd probably do it much like I did. My honest account is probably the best thing I know how to use, because I feel like people arent always apt to take advice directly and follow through with it. It couldn't hurt to say more on it though, much like you mentioned the related part about what effect smiling can have.
@GlenM
amazing and so helpful thanks!
@sevenstars777 glad it was helpful!
@GlenM
Hello, Glen! Wow, this is such an eye-opening and inspirational post. You are absolutely right that the mistakes we make do not define us, and that we grow with every set-back- because it's how we bounce back that counts. 😊 ❤️
@ThoughtfulBlossom love that ❤️ it is how we bounce back that matters!
@GlenM
I disagree with taking steps back bc of my parents failures or the things they didnt accomplish. I havent agreed to that. Their failures are not mine. Life would not be so difficult if there were not ppl making it difficult. Its that simple. Yes we face organic challenges in life and need to build ourselves and develop strength to get through them. Yet life isn't only about taking hits and being, resilient and denying the fact that ppl intentionally make life difficult and or easy for some and others. A part of building resilience is beginning with the truth. If you are not strong enough to face the truth and make a change, then what is your resilience built upon?
I release the idea of taking on my parents baggage. It's not mine to carry and therefore, I only carry what's mine to accomplish in this life.
@EvolvedScorpio It sounds like you have got a good map / path / plan figured out and I respect that. It makes sense :)
@GlenM
I think there are two things that helped me overcome failures, one before the process and one after. Nowadays I seek opinions from people I know before making a decision, I think a lot about the pros and cons and only after that do I make a decision. When a mistake comes, I don't blame myself, but I look for where the mistake was in my decision, then I correct it and try again. With each mistake and each correction I realize that I gain experience and the process becomes more dominated.
@sweetgrandpa reminds me of that old saying, "there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors" and I wholeheartedly agree. Amazing how much even checking in with one other person can help you see things that you otherwise would have missed.
I also really like the idea of breaking down the decision making process into micro-steps to see where you went off the path or missed something.
If comfortable, how would you write these up to give someone else guidance to use them in life?
@GlenM
An interesting way I usually use to understand my flaws is to look at my life as if it were a company, whenever there is an error of some process, corporate leaders are encouraged not to blame employees, but to find the flaws in the processes and create measures and solutions so that those failures do not happen again.
I've never met a co-worker who didn't feel sad about making a mistake, but companies never see him as the sole manager. The step by step I do is:
- I seek a conversation with someone coherent and prudent, it can be one or more people (the 7 cups is an excellent environment for this first step) who have easy to expose different points of view, remember that the purpose here is not to listen to advice, the person responsible for the decision will be you, this friend will just help you to hear different points of view and perspectives helping to think about your decision.
- Take a moment for reflection, very valid write the pros on one side and cons on the other.
- I make the decision and I go ahead, let's remember that we evaluate everything in the best way we can at that moment!
I failed, and now? I don't blame myself, I look at the lawsuit, what's missing? Lack of knowledge? Lack of skill? Something external like the behavior of someone else who didn't expect it?
- I take some time to think about what went wrong and try to fit in to avoid making mistakes again.
- You're going to try again in a better way. Avoiding the same mistakes.
A few years ago I was in doubt whether or not i should change jobs, I sat down with my father who helped me think about it, it would be a better career plan, but I would perform a function that did not dominate. I decided to change and take the job, but the first month I thought it wasn't a good idea and I started to suffer for wrong. Analyzing the situation as if I was outside I realized that the problem was in my lack of training for the role, I enrolled in a basic course and gradually i was developing the necessary skills and today it is 16 years that I work in the same company happy with my work!
I hope these tips are valuable for others to use in their lives.
Insightful and engaging.
@Kiew1205 thank you!
@GlenM this post was a meaningful read, thank you
@GlenM Such an insightful read !! My lived experiences have taught me how much of a disadvantage it can be when you haven't had to deal with failures early in life. A success streak is no bed of roses! I've come across so many instances where parents and elders let children win games only to spare them a moment of disappointment. While I get the nurture's strong need to protect, how I wish more people realise the value of experiencing failures early in life.
*nurturer's
Excellent points! How would you phrase that to teach it to another person?
If it's to the parental figure here, probably I'd ask them to reflect whether they would want their child to grow up believing they would never have to deal with any setbacks in life. If it's to the child, I would initiate a conversation, may be starting with a simple question on how would they have felt if they hadn't won the game...
@GlenM
I like the ideas but I feel I am never going to win. I feel I am stuck in Life and there is a lot of fears and uncertainty in my life.
I can definitely understand feeling that way. One thing that might help is to lol carefully at wins. Sometimes just waking up is a win. Sometimes reaching out for help is a win. They are often there, but can sometimes be hard to see.
