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If you search for the term "failure" you will find that it’s closely followed by "success". Browse further into the abyss of inevitable inspirational quotes and it seems evident that failure must lead to success, right?
Log onto social media, and you will find friends and strangers silently preaching hope through pictures with words on it; for a fleeting moment it’ll feel obvious that failure is a natural part of success.
These pretty, inspirational images say things like, "Only one thing makes a dream impossible: a fear of failure." Or "I have not failed, I’ve just found 10 000 ways that won’t work."
It will all make you want to believe, if only for a few seconds. But then you’re out in the real world, the one with bills and expectations, where inspirational quotes can’t prop you up should failure loom near.
Then what?
The truth is, there is no feel-good way to deal with failure. It will happen, it probably won’t be pretty, but it is necessary – a fact confirmed by science.
You’re not in complete control.
And that’s okay.
"Our brains store memories of past blunders. We then use those memories to improve how well we do in future attempts."
Scientists advise that we need to fail in order to learn, and we need to do so more often; more mistakes mean more learnings which can be applied to different problems.
Looking at your spending for the month, you realise that you’ve been rather extravagant with eating out. This isn’t the first month that this happened and there’s a lingering sense that your financial history might repeat itself next month (I speak from experience).
After taking a deep breath of acceptance, there’re a few things you can do to help you be more in control in future.
The 10 000-Hour Rule
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, he suggests that it takes 10 000 hours to master something. The concept has gained popularity since, and, while the focus was placed on the total number of hours required, it’s what happens within those hours that’s important.
While not outwardly obvious, the significance in Gladwell’s approach is that there is trying and failing involved. It’s not the repetitive actions, or muscle memory, that contributes to the development of a new skill, but the mistakes and learnings that inform better decisions thereafter.
Taking an active approach to your finances, while looking at it as a skill that needs to be developed, allows you to accept that there’s some trial and error involved. Keeping a safety net makes good sense, but so does taking the occasional risk in your stock portfolio for example.
Liberation and your worst fears realised
Often, we’re more afraid of the uncertainty in a possibility, or the 'what if', rather than the actual outcome. It’s never that we’re panicked about the world having ended (because it’d be over), just that it might end. In a commencement speech, Conan O’Brien, shared the following observations on fear:
"There are few things more liberating in life than having your worst fear realized. But the point is this: It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique."
Log onto social media, and you will find friends and strangers silently preaching hope through pictures with words on it; for a fleeting moment it’ll feel obvious that failure is a natural part of success.
These pretty, inspirational images say things like, "Only one thing makes a dream impossible: a fear of failure." Or "I have not failed, I’ve just found 10 000 ways that won’t work."
It will all make you want to believe, if only for a few seconds. But then you’re out in the real world, the one with bills and expectations, where inspirational quotes can’t prop you up should failure loom near.
Then what?
The truth is, there is no feel-good way to deal with failure. It will happen, it probably won’t be pretty, but it is necessary – a fact confirmed by science.
You’re not in complete control.
And that’s okay.
"Our brains store memories of past blunders. We then use those memories to improve how well we do in future attempts."
Scientists advise that we need to fail in order to learn, and we need to do so more often; more mistakes mean more learnings which can be applied to different problems.
Looking at your spending for the month, you realise that you’ve been rather extravagant with eating out. This isn’t the first month that this happened and there’s a lingering sense that your financial history might repeat itself next month (I speak from experience).
After taking a deep breath of acceptance, there’re a few things you can do to help you be more in control in future.
The 10 000-Hour Rule
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, he suggests that it takes 10 000 hours to master something. The concept has gained popularity since, and, while the focus was placed on the total number of hours required, it’s what happens within those hours that’s important.
While not outwardly obvious, the significance in Gladwell’s approach is that there is trying and failing involved. It’s not the repetitive actions, or muscle memory, that contributes to the development of a new skill, but the mistakes and learnings that inform better decisions thereafter.
Taking an active approach to your finances, while looking at it as a skill that needs to be developed, allows you to accept that there’s some trial and error involved. Keeping a safety net makes good sense, but so does taking the occasional risk in your stock portfolio for example.
Liberation and your worst fears realised
Often, we’re more afraid of the uncertainty in a possibility, or the 'what if', rather than the actual outcome. It’s never that we’re panicked about the world having ended (because it’d be over), just that it might end. In a commencement speech, Conan O’Brien, shared the following observations on fear:
"There are few things more liberating in life than having your worst fear realized. But the point is this: It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique."
So, according to Conan’s advice, being faced with our fear can be freeing. Finding ourselves in the unfortunate position of debt, for example, could be liberating. You no longer have to defend the societal ideal of "having it all" and can rather focus on finding a way to change things for the better.
What if the purveyors of self-help were the real obstacles in our liberation from fear? Inspirational quotes and books on 'How to Life' can give us an armour of bravery with which to face the world, but it also has the potential to become our proverbial blankie.
It might be time to throw caution and blankies to the wind and search for "failure" – it always leads to "success", right?
Article by 22Seven.
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