Failure Is Just Part Of The Process

“You’re not losing them if you’re not taking them to trial,” the senior partner said after a jury brought in a record-breaking multi-million dollar verdict against his client.

The size of the loss boggled my mind. And the concept that such a loss could just be part of a process stunned me.

Success – and not just any old success – but success at a high level –  was drilled into me at an early age. A “B” on a report card was nowhere as good as an “A.” And an “A-” never yielded the praise of an “A+.”  A score of 100 on an exam was cause for celebration. A 95, well not so much.

Failure: unfathomable. A dark abyss never to be contemplated.

The Opposite of Success Is NOT Failure. It’s Mediocrity.

So when I saw Randy Gage’s quote last week, it brought me up short: “The opposite of success is not failure, it’s mediocrity. Failure is part of the success process as you learn and grow.”

Intuitively, I know this to be true. We learn to walk by falling down. We learn to ride a bike by falling off. We learn to ski by landing in the snow.

In climbing, I know that I’ve advanced fastest when I’ve been willing to try new routes, new ideas, new techniques; when I’ve been willing to fall off and try again. When I’ve stuck with what I know, climbed inside my own margin of error, I’ve been “successful,” but I’ve failed to grow. Good enough. But not great.

Great comes through failure.

We Need To Poke The Box. And Be Willing To Fail.

Seth Godin’s new book Poke The Box is just awesome.  It’s thesis: our obligation as creators is to keep trying, keep experimenting, keep prodding, keep poking, keep searching until we find what works, what resonates, what excites, what sells. And then poke some more. Never rest, never stay static. Always poke.

And failure? Well it’s just part of the poking process. Poke and nothing happens? Then poke again. Poke differently. Try something new. And keep trying, keep poking, until you find what works.

Poke and fail to learn and grow.

Edison apparently said of his 10,000 “failures” before his success with the incandescent light bulb: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,0oo ways that won’t work.”

I’m fond of saying that we miss 100% of the shots we don’t take.

Would that I were better at living that.

So Go Ahead. Fail For Fun. And Maybe Profit Too.

What if, this week, we could:

• Try something completely new. Dare to be a beginner. Dare not to be good.
• Push the edge of something we do beyond our comfort zone.
• Work on a project until we fail.

That seems like it might just scare the bejeezus out of me. But our journey on the edge is always between success and failure. How will we ever know how far we can go, unless we dare to go too far?