Power of Failure
”I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” -- Thomas Edison
This
piece is dedicated to the most important principle of success: If you can’t
fail, you cannot succeed.
Welcome to the world of
failure, paradoxically, the most powerful theme and attitude in the world of
success. If love is the most beautiful emotion in the world, failure is the
most difficult to handle. However, as we will see later, the key difference
between successful people and the not so successful ones lies in their ability
to fail more often.
Early in life we all
learnt a quote: “Failure is the stepping stone to success.” However, for most
people in this world, this is just one more interesting proverb, whose depth
and significance are not explored beyond the contours of the English language. This
is fundamentally because our education and social systems penalize us for
failing. In our lives, the fear of failure is greater than the desire for
success. Children in school fear failing due to the consequences back home.
Somebody who gets good marks is rated as better than somebody who gets less
marks. Thus early in life, children learn the art of protecting their space,
unhealthy competition and lack of respect for team work, which they carry into
their adult lives.
Ironically, however, some of the most successful
people in the world are those without a glorious formal degree. But such people
diligently and painstakingly acquired real life education, like leadership,
selling, wealth creation, etc. Amazingly, some of the most successful
businesses in the world are run by so-called deemed `academic failures`, but
for whom highly qualified people work. Recently I was part of an interesting
discussion where one of my friends said how A Graders work for B Graders who
work for companies started by C Graders.
Thus, education can be categorized into two parts:
formal and real life. If somebody was a great performer academically, that is
no guarantee for success in the real world, and if somebody did not do well
academically, his/her obituary need not be written.
One of the great aspects
of real life education is the ability to fail often and learn from those
failures. There is no bigger teacher than failure in this world and that truly
is the power of failure.
Thomas
Edison famously said: ”I have not failed. I've just found 10,000
ways that won't work.”
The power of failure lies in the way we respond to it. Edison’s
perseverance changed the way humanity lives. The success of Michael Jordan,
iconic basketball player, lies in how many times he failed. An article on the
internet says:
“In a famous ad campaign launched by ‘Nike’, Michael is quoted as saying he
has:
- Lost almost 300 games (that’s more games than many NBA players have court time in)
- Missed over 9000 shots at goal (again more shots than an average NBA player even takes)
- 26 times he was given the ball to take the game winning shot and MISSED
Jordan goes on
to say the reason he has succeeded boils down to his constantly failure and
used failure as motivation to shoot for success. In other words Jordan viewed
failures as stepping stones towards success; his shooting average was just
below 50% so to score he would have to take two shots, one to fail the other to
score.” -- (source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/thomas-edison-and-michael-jordan-were-failures-2010-9).
Take a closer
look at the last sentence: “Jordan viewed failures as stepping stones towards
success; his shooting average was just below 50% so to score he would have to
take two shots, one to fail the other to score.” What we learnt early in life
about failure being a stepping stone to success comes alive powerfully through
this example.
Let’s take another example from the
sporting arena. Kapil Dev took 434 test wickets. But for that he had to bowl
27,740 deliveries -- (source: http://www.liveindia.com/cricket/Records.html). This implies that 26,872 deliveries
did not succeed to pick up a wicket. But by failing these many times, he became
a great bowler. Power of Failure! It makes you great.
Failure however
does not become your strength unless you learn from your mistakes. Most people
give up after a few failures because they find it difficult to look within and
learn from those mistakes. It is absolutely OK to fail, but it is not OK not to
learn from those failures. After all, only if you LEARN will you EARN, as the
word earn is part of the word learn.
The great
lesson from the examples of Edison, Jordan and Kapil Dev is that successful
people fail more often than failures do. This is true in every department of
life, be it sports, selling, entrepreneurship, etc. But the trick lies in
persisting and not giving up. Just imagine what a great loss to human potential
it would have been if the three gentlemen had given up. Their persistence not
only made them successful, but also a role model.
I am no Jordan
or Dev, but in my own humble way, I have learnt to absorb the power of failure.
I failed in Std 12 in the Science
stream. I then had to shift to the Arts stream, and eventually I completed my M.A
(Politics). Some time in 2003, one fine day I decided I wanted to be an
independent trainer and quit my job. I failed and within a few months had to
return to a job and I joined Max New York Life Insurance as a trainer. That
proved to be a turning point in my life. I learnt a lot and continued to pursue
my dream of being on my own. I once again in 2009 quit my job to be on my own,
but this time with the help of the lessons learnt from the 2003 failure and
with better planning.
As an
independent trainer I fail more often today than ever before. Often prospective
clients say `No`, or some training sessions do not receive good feedback. But
each time I do a bad session, if I diligently work on the lessons learnt, the
next one works out better.
Friends, failure
is a part of life and the only way to grow. We all failed to walk the first
time we tried. We all failed the first time we tried riding a bicycle. We all
failed the first time we tried our hand at cooking. But did we give up? So
don’t worry the next time you fail. Don’t get disheartened if success is
delayed. Just remember, the more often you fail, greater would be your success.
Fall in love with failure. Persist,
Learn, Don’t give up. Success will then chase you all your life.
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