Last year, Gordon hosted its annual Highland Games competition. I figured it wasn’t my thing but showed up anyway for the experience of it. The loud music reminded my of my reservations but I resolved myself to stay and widen my horizons. There were plenty of games, tug of war, bull riding, minute-to-win-it games, 4-man competitions, and much more. There were enough options that everyone, even the visiting families, could find their niches, or something they could win at. Not me. I lost every single game I tried, every time I tried it. I would stand in line, get to the front, get briefed, do the activity, and lose. This happened 11 times. (Funny how we keep track of these things.) I felt like Midas, except instead of gold, everything I touched turned to poo.
See, failure hurts in two ways. First, it has the natural consequences. Fumble a football pass and as a consequence, you lose the game. Second, it has the shame. Now, if you’re insecure like I can be, sometimes that second one hurts more. And that’s the part that was bugging me after the Highland Games.
For the next few days I shied away from anything I might fail at. I was done with broadening my horizons. I wasn’t going to risk embarrassing myself by talking to a stranger or going on a trip to somewhere new. In college, my peak years of potential growth, I was hiding from change.
To get out of this rut, I hatched a plan. I couldn’t do anything about the natural consequences of failure, but I could work on the shame part. Here’s the thing. Every time we fail at something, it’s a sign we tried something daunting. That courage is something to be proud of! Also, behind every failure, there are five successes - five times this vital courage paid off! In that light, failure is just the natural cost of winning risky things. Moreover, with each attempt, try or fail, we grow into more mature, more confident people. This changed my view of what was going on; now each failure was a win in my book, not something to be afraid of. In fact, failure is something to be proud of! I went to my whiteboard and set up a tally system. Every time I failed, another tally went up on my board.
Every time we fail at something, it’s a sign we tried something daunting. That courage is something to be proud of!
When I messed up a social interaction, that was a tally. When my voice cracked when saying “Hi,” when I was clumsy and couldn’t learn swing dancing, when I tried to take charge and made the wrong decision, that was a tally. Every week I erased the tallies and replaced them with permanent stars, as a celebration of my failure. It was weird, but I got to the point where I would be disappointed in myself because I hadn’t failed (and earned a tally) recently. I was so happy to earn a tally symbolizing courage that failure felt like success. Since then, I’ve erased the tally count, because, to some extent, I can’t tell when I fail anymore. Failure and growth feel indistinguishable. Somehow, my dorky trick with the whiteboard actually worked.
Being afraid of failure is the worst thing you can do for yourself. Embrace it by, after failure, being proud of yourself for the courage it took to get there. Embrace failure and you’ll love the kind of person you’ll become.
Lesson: Failure is the road to growth. If we can learn to embrace it, we grow into better people.
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