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!