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5: Navigate through failure

Failure is good. There are four elements that will help you understand how to navigate through failure.

1)You have taken a risk or attempted a task

2)You know that approach does not work

3)You gain a different perspective

4)You have the opportunity to start again

The first element – You have taken a risk or attempted a task means you are active. You knew what you wanted and attempted to get it. Theodore Roosevelt, the 26^th President of the United States of America, in his Citizenship in a Republic speech at the Sorbonne, Paris characterizes this best when he told his audience:

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who, at worst, if he fails at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

The second element – You know that approach does not work. In the words of Bill Murray in the movie Stripes – “That’s a fact Jack.” Thomas Alva Edison was asked how it felt to have failed 10,000 times before inventing an electric lamp. Edison corrected the inquiry by saying he had not failed 10,000 times but he had found 10,000 ways not to invent the electric lamp.

“It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success.”

Havelock Ellis

The third element - You gain a different perspective. Failure is in the eye of the beholder. My son, RT, played cornerback on his Pee Wee football team. One Saturday morning he was playing a team that ran the power sweep like the Old Cleveland Browns when Jim Brown was a star in the AFL. Sweep after sweep the team would come around the corner and RT would get wiped out. RT and his teammates were only able to stop the sweep a few times. I was standing on the sidelines trying to figure out how to console him for his failure to contain or slow down the power sweep. The game mercifully ended and I waited for RT to come off the field. I prepared a little pep talk about trying his best and better luck next time. When he got to me I asked him about the other team’s power sweep and what did he think? He looked at me and said, “I know why they were running the sweeps all day.” I was curious and asked him to explain. He said, “They ran the sweep because they were afraid to pass against me.” Wow what we learn out of the mouths of babes. I learned a lesson that day.

The fourth element – You have the opportunity to start again. There is the old adage - if at first you don’t succeed try, try again. The difference between failing and succeeding could be one more try. Abraham Lincoln, the 16^th President of the United States of America embodied the fourth element.

Failed in business in1831

Defeated in Legislature in1832

Failed in business again in 1833

Defeated for Speaker in 1838

Defeated for election in 1840

Defeated for Congress in 1848

Defeated for Senate in 1855

Defeated for Vice President in 1856

Defeated for Senate in 1858

Elected President in 1860

How many times must you fail before you win? Only enough until you win.