Are we taught to fear failure?

We marvel at rags to riches success stories inspired by those who endure failure after failure persisting in the face of insurmountable obstacles to prevail against overwhelming odds. But to those who have lived those experiences these stories often miss the real point.

It is tempting to attribute a great deal of STARBUCKS success to perseverance when we learn of their inauspicious opening.  Walking into one of Seattle’s first stores in 1986 you would have been greeted by opera playing in the background, menus in Italian and not a chair in sight.  This was one of many missteps Howard Schultz made over the years but like every successful entrepreneur alive he didn’t survive mistakes, he thrived on the lessons.

On the surface leaders of giants like Pixar, Zappos, Southwest Airlines, and Clif Bar all embody resilience and tenacity in the face of adversity but I think this picture is incomplete.  If we are looking for a lesson it is not that we need to increase our ability to endure but to let go of our learned misunderstanding of failure.

We were not born to fear failure.  We were taught to fear failure.

  Children KNOW the truth.  It is adults that are confused.

Moments after capturing our grandson enjoying this fountain in McCall a bikini clad blonde grabbed his full and undivided attention.  In an instant he was rocketing down the hill legs and arms flying in every direction toward his goal.  Our daughter’s Mom-dar kicked in as she moved to intercept catching him at a dead run just inches from his highly anticipated introduction to this preteen beauty.   But the contest wasn’t over.  He still had the, wriggle like a fish and imagine you weigh 500 lbs, trick up his sleeve but,    , despite her own amusement at his insistence, mighty mom prevailed.  Still undeterred he struggled to see over her shoulder as she carted him away and with the kind of confidence found only in toddlers beckoned to his newest girlfriend, “call me”.

When we all gathered round I expected him to be a little agitated over being restrained, maybe even frustrated over the missed opportunity or even the unfairness of over-sized adults.  But in his mind he hadn’t failed, there was no mistake just a different result.  Like caffeinated conscious that only a chair- less café could bring he accepted “what was” and moved on to the next solution.  With absolute confidence and all the seriousness a three year old can muster he looked at his mom and said; “does she have my number”?

Is a child’s irreproachable persistence simply the inexperience of knowing less about the way things work or more about knowing how things really are?

If we are looking for leadership lessons from the super successful we have to look no farther than our own children (or grandchildren).  Children understand the truth that neurobiologists like Jonah Lehrer are just now able to scientifically validate.  Mistakes are the ONLY ways we learn therefore mistakes are the precursor to all learning.  But do we find any definition anywhere that tells us that mistakes are the foundation of all progress.  Instead we define mistakes as “proving unsuccessful; lack of success; nonperformance of something due, required, or expected; subnormal quantity or quality; an insufficiency.  Is this what you want your children to learn?  Or do you want to teach young and old alike what our grandson new instinctively at three.

Failure: an unexpected outcome providing irreplaceable insight into unlimited opportunities. 

This is not motivation or irrational optimism but a useful, practical description of what we do when we do our best.  Isn’t that what you would want every child to learn?  If it is a valuable lesson for our young maybe we should work hard to relearn it ourselves.

1. Deliberately make some innocuous mistake.  Spell something incorrectly and notice how you feel.  Watch how others behave if they notice your mistake.  If this smallest of things, purposely done generates feelings of discomfort consider why it is given such emotional importance.

2. Observe the conversations you have with yourself when you error in any way.  How much time and energy do these thoughts waste?

3. If you find yourself trying to correct a past mistake consider instead the lessons you would not have learned if you had not traveled this path.

4. Everything happens to teach us something about ourselves and since mistakes are the only way we learn then mistakes are the only way we grow.