How to Fail Better

TLDR - If you don't feel like reading the whole thing

Failure is hard, and sometimes, the wisest thing to do is cut our losses and move on to something else. Many times, though, we stand a genuine chance at future success in the same thing, but this demands that we acknowledge and effectively learn from our failures and persevere. Also, it helps to find a safe space to talk honestly about our failures.

Hard, But Worth It

No matter what the motivational speakers tell us, failure is excruciatingly painful, something we would rather not experience. After a couple of failures this week, I got to thinking—failure is bad, but then it’s also inevitable, so the best thing we can do really, is to figure out how to do it well. How to navigate those lows skillfully and gracefully. And then I did what I usually do when something is persistently on my mind(read more about it).

Here I share some of the insights I found.

As a child, Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, was used to an unconventional dinner table question from her father: "How did you fail this week?” He encouraged them to fail, she says. To try things which, if they didn't succeed at, they would have at least done for the experience and the lessons, stories, and people they encountered.

”If you never fail, you’re probably aiming too low” Hallgeir Sjåstad

Usually, though, most of us avoid failure altogether, or, when it happens, recede with shame and embarrassment. But by putting things into context and not catastrophising our failures, we can learn from them and push forward.

Failure Sharing

Dr. Amy Edmonson, a Harvard professor of leadership, encourages failure sharing. Because this normalises the reality of failure and I'd add that it also helps us learn from each other's failures, which can be helpful for both parties. It can also be a bonding exercise.

So to act quick, I will share some of my failures here, feel free to share yours with me here if you'd like to lol.

1. I tried for an amateur badminton team and wasn't picked, for the amateur team!

2. A project I tried to implement from scratch with some friends failed to take off. Learned the hard way, the value of effective research and planning before plunging right in.

Frameworks to Learn from Failures

“Inspirational speakers are fond of quoting the words of the novelist Samuel Beckett: "Fail again. Fail better.’ But the truth is that most of us fail again and fail the same.” David Robson

Here are some evidence-based frameworks that I found to be interesting. I hope they're helpful.

1. Not Being a Sour Grape

In an episode of Friends, Phoebe, a quirky character on the show, gets the chance to perform her songs at a children's library. When the children don't respond well to her unconventional songs, she becomes frustrated and sarcastically suggests that the children are too young to appreciate her unique talent and that her songs are simply too sophisticated for them.

The sour grape effect, a form of self-preservation, is where we downplay a failure or its effects.

Most of us, in order to attempt something in the first place, consider ourselves at least competent enough to pull it off, but when things go wrong, we might resort to explanations that protect us from taking a look at ourselves and how we may be responsible. Or we might convince ourselves that plan B is, in fact, better, and was our plan A to begin with.

This may help us cope with the setback, but it does little to help our future success in that area.

2. Not Being an Ostrich

A different tactic we use to cope with our failures is to simply look away from them. Focus on something else, and pretend it didn’t happen—life goes on. Research by Professor Lauren Eskreis-WInkler explores the ostrich effect and our failure to learn from failure. You can read the research paper here.

The findings of the study were that participants demonstrated preferential memory for the things they did right over the ones they failed at, failing to learn from their failures. Interestingly enough, they learned more from the failures of others than their own.

💡 We can manage the Sour Grape and Ostrich effects by practicing self-distancing.

We first decide to look the failure right in the eye, and then instead of asking why did I fail? We can ask, why did _(fill with your name)_ fail? Taking a step back and looking at the failure from a distance allows us to be more objective and also reduces the threat to our self-image that we tend to be protective of. We can also make a more conscious effort to share our learnings from our failures with others, this doesn't only potentially help them if they choose to take our advice, but has been shown to help the advice-givers themselves too.

Happy learning from failure and bouncing back up!

RESOURCES

Book: Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

Research Article: Not Learning From Failure—the Greatest Failure of All

NY Times article: Want to Thrive? First, Learn to Fail

TED Talk: Failure is Necessary