| There once was a teenager who wanted a driving license. |
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| Of course, she needed lessons first, so after a bit of organising the moment had come for her first one. There she was, in the most deserted carpark the driving instructor could find. The instructor told her to let out the clutch easily, slowly put her foot on the accelerator, and just drive it in a straight line down
the carpark. |
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| Clutch easily went out. Accelerator slowly went down. Perfectly. And as she slowly coasted along, the car began to drift off to one side. |
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| She had failed. |
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| She stopped the car. Put it in neutral. Turned it off. And never drove again. |
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| Stupid, really, how much importance most people put on not being wrong. Understandable, because from the moment school-life begins, success is expected and failure punished. But stupid. Especially given the greatest accomplishments of history came after a string of failures. |
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The Great Pyramid at Giza was not the first pyramid ever made. |
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Michelangelo didn't start off his career with the Cisteen Chapel. |
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Edison didn't try an idea for a lightbulb once, fail, and say, "Bugger this!" |
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And Joan of Arc certainly didn't spring Athena-like from her mother's womb ready to lead an army. |
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| So what's the story with this aversion to failure? |
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| Again, I have an idea. |
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| Once upon a time, when you felt like going to the toilet, you just did. Didn't matter if a toilet was close at hand or not. It was around the same time you were learning to walk. |
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| Now the number of times you fell on your bum before you managed what could pass for a walk was in the thousands. Stand up. Fall down. Stand up. Fall down. |
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| And everybody encouraged you to try again. |
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| How many times did you say ga, goo, and spblflahhh (it's difficult to spell) before you managed a word that could loosely be interpreted as English? |
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| And yet everybody encouraged you to try again. |
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| How many times did you get behind the wheel of a car before you could steer, change gears, listen to the radio, wind the window down, check out the person walking along the side of the road, and keep an eye on the idiot tailgating you all at the same time without freaking out? |
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| And yet everyone had done it, so you encouraged yourself to try again. |
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| You noticing a pattern? Failure's got nothing to do with making an error in a task and everything to do with how we treat that error in our heads. |
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| Consider that we'd all be in wheelchairs if instead of encouragement, parents smacked their toddlers whenever they fell over. |
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| Stand up. Fall down. Smack. Now try again and get it right! |
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| I don't think so. |
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| And yet - even allowing for melodrama - this is precisely what happens on a daily basis in our lives. A certain breed of people - sometimes seemingly in the majority - are just yearning for someone to screw up so that they can make a narky comment. Could be at work, in their personal life, or even in a rela-
tionship. It happens so often - whether real or imagined - that for many people, the first thought in doing something is not how good it'll be when they succeed, but what others will say if they fail. |
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| Which again is understandable, but ridiculous. Because failure is the natural, inbuilt way to learn. |
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| Act, Fail & Learn, Adjust and Act |
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| Kids and successful people have got the right idea. Failure doesn't stop them, because they don't subscribe to all the garbage that failure represents to most people. Or, in the case of kids, they just don't realise that only losers love to knock down people who fail. |
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| Now if you were here in front of me, we could neutralise whatever your particular fear of failure is (got the shameless plug in early this time). Very quickly, too. But as my skills in that regard are absolutely useless when recited, I'll just have to give you a few things for your brain to chew over. |
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| People have many wonderful and varied reasons for stopping something. Someone could write a book on all the reasons or excuses people give for failing or not even trying something in the first place. Whereas those who succeed will probably tell you that all you need is: |
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| a. |
Something you really want to achieve, and; |
| b. |
The flexibility to learn from errors whilst doing it |
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| Everything else flows from these two things: the determination to continue; the belief that it's possible; the expectation of derision of those on the sidelines and the ability to see it for the expression of fear that it is. There are many more. |
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AS LONG AS YOU KEEP IN MIND,
THAT YOU WANT TO MAKE ERRORS AND
LEARN FROM THEM, YOU'LL SUCCEED. |
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| Yes, you read that right. |
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| You want to make errors. |
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| Unless you're doing something extremely risky, something that carries with it a mortal danger upon failure, errors are absolutely necessary for achievement of mastery. |
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| If you do something once and succeed, you've found only one way of doing it. |
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| If you do something, don't succeed, and continue until you do, you've learned how not to do it. And how to adapt your behaviour. You'll have learned the value of flexibility in persistence. Whereas the person who succeeded once will go into a different situation, fail, and wonder why. They might even get frustrated. Or sad. Or angry. And try the same thing again. And again. And again. |
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| Because they haven't learned that immediate success is not a natural way to learn. Errors are. |
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| Act, Adjust, Act. |
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| Many are the kids who'll breeze through primary school and early high school, only to hit a brick wall with the marks when it comes to Year 11 & 12. Sometimes, the kids will breeze through both primary and high school, and then their marks will take a dive during uni. |
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| And if you take a look at the most successful people ever to walk the planet, you'll discover that they weren't particularly skilled at school. They probably didn't show much aptitude for anything. But they all had one thing in common. |
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| They made errors and learned from them. |
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IT'S BEEN SAID THAT THE ONLY DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN SOMEONE WHO'S SUCCESSFUL AND
SOMEONE WHO'S NOT, IS THAT THE SUCCESSFUL
PERSON FAILED MORE OFTEN. |
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| Consider that. |
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| The only way to be a failure is to fail and stop. That is the only way. |
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| If you act, fail and learn, adjust, act, etc, you cannot fail. You will never be a failure. And the opinions of those who are in the habit of failing and stopping - or who are so averse to failure that they've given up attempting in the first place - will shrink and fade in significance. |
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| Act, Adjust, Act. |
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| Decide where you want to drive yourself and just keep adjusting the steering wheel until you get there. And yes, it's not always that easy. |
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| But it can be. |
