One of the greatest fears that mankind faces beyond public speaking and death is the fear of failure. Man would sooner remain unaccomplished than try to achieve a magnificent feat and fail in the process! The problem is we view failure through the wrong prism of life. Nobody wants to be defeated in a championship fight. The losers in an Olympic 100 metres dash are hardly remembered and it is falsehood of the highest order to say participation in the Olympics is the greatest sporting feat of mankind. Where do you put winning a gold medal if particpation is that important? Fear of being rejected or not accomplishing our hearts desire stops us in the tracks of trying! There is a humiliation attached to failure that makes the trier bow his head in shame and regret, muttering the inaudible: “Had I known!” But we all know that nothing in life is accomplished without trying and therefore is it not better to fail than not to try and succeed?
In seeking new heights and breaking records in management, Brian Tracey advises that we “fail forward”. He counsels that we should increase our failure rate not consciously but by continuous effort with a view to succeed. The logic is, if we try hard enough as many times as possible, we will end up with some level of success along the way. Now the beauty of one tremendous success out of a hundred failures is nobody remembers the failures, they only always point to success and this is what vindicates us. Therefore failure is essential to success. Let us not get stuck in dysfunction or what some theorists describe as adolescent despondence. It’s a psychological state that keeps a person locked in failure without thinking about the possibility of success.
In seeking new heights and breaking records in management, Brian Tracey advises that we “fail forward”.
William James once said: “the deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” Sometimes we must be rejected before we are accepted and then appreciated. Failure, simply put, is not having the courage to try and keep trying. So, do not let the fear of failure stand between you and your dreams. When you do fail at something, turn the psychology around. Most of the people will see your failure as negative, turn it to positive by reanalysing it. One other question we must ask ourselves is what variables can I control which would help my success level? Sometimes failure at a task or effort we desire to accomplish is due to things beyond our control. We may not be able to control the weather or the traffic or the moods of all those around us, but we most certainly can control our attitudes towards these events. The right attitude helps us lift ourselves out resignation to failure as a status and not a temporary or past event which it actually is.
If we fail as a result of variables beyond our control, then the strategy is to seek those variables we can control and see what needs to be done to dominate them. If the tasks we have in mind require expertise for key activity, there are bound to be experts in those areas whom we consult and if we cannot reach the experts, then we can always find a book. Nothing is new in this world and books have been written on absolutely anything and everything we have in mind. If our task is physical in nature that will require some kind of training, we need to seek out a teacher who would serve as mentor and inspirer to us. Everyone needs a mentor. No matter how good we are at our tasks, there is always someone better. Why do we not learn from them? Anyone who seeks to lead a corporation, a country or an organization for instance, ought to go through some tutelage on leadership. There are some things we cannot trifle with in terms of trial and error.
So, to fail forward simply means keep trying no matter how many times you fail. What you will discover is many ways of “how not to accomplish what you set out to do.”
So, in many senses of the word, failure ought to strengthen us to get back on the horse and ride again, no matter how many times we fall off. The belief is that sooner or later we shall learn from our mistakes and get used to riding one way or the other. If we can draw lessons from our failure at most activity, the chances are we shall do better the next time. We must learn to use the fear of failure as fuel for more trials. How does the saying go: “If you don’t succeed, try, try, try again!” That is at least three tries with one “again” making four.
If we take the popular stories of Albert Einstein and The Wright Brothers into consideration we will learn a lot of lessons. Einstein believed that one day humanity would have light in the night by using electricity and the light bulb after trying and failing several times he eventually succeeded. Now if Einstein had not been consistent in his trials, one of two things might have happened to humanity: We would either know somebody else for the invention of the bulb or we would have lived in that kind of light for a longer period. The Wright Brothers on their own part believed that man could fly using machines and from a bicycle workshop they put together contraptions that they believed would help them fly. After a couple of accidents and failures to get the machine off the ground, eventually they succeeded in flying a short distance over a river. It was a short flight, for the brothers, but a great leap for mankind because the aircraft that were designed after that test flight took their bearings and principles of flying and aviation generally from the Wright Brothers who laid the foundation.
Think about it, if you are old fashioned and you like to pick your taxis on the street to take you to your destination, you don’t give up because one or two taxis refused to go that route. You keep trying till you find someone who will take you! If we miss the mark in any effort we are embarking upon we need to ask ourselves questions: Could I have done it better? Is there someone who could have helped me to achieve my goal that I did not consult? Did I spend enough time on preparing, planning or training for the feat? Could a better plan have helped me achieve my target? In asking the right questions, we not only face our demons, meaning the things that scare us, we understand methods of improvement we also gain experience along the way. Such experience is normally valuable when we wish to pass the same course again.
So, to fail forward simply means keep trying no matter how many times you fail. What you will discover is many ways of “how not to accomplish what you set out to do.”
*Ogundadegbe is a renowned management consultant. He trains managers and executives in the arts of Customer Service, Human Resources Management and Management strategy ([email protected]).
