You’ve heard the quote in countless movies, and perhaps even in real world situations. “Failure is not an option.” I’m here to tell you that it is. Of course, when lives are at stake, this optimism is critical to get those involved motivated to succeed. But I’m not here to talk about high stakes missions. I’m here to discuss failures in daily life, whether it be personal, business, government, or global affairs. Failure is a possibility. Failure to recognize failure should not be an option.
As humans, we fail immediately when we are born. We don’t breathe for the beginning seconds of our lives. Our body recognizes this failure, expels the fluids from our lungs, and we finally breathe fresh oxygen. Ahhh, what a feeling that must have been! Thankfully, in most cases, we have our fascinating bodies to thank for learning from this failure. There are situations where an infant needs assistance, and thankfully medical professionals have learned from these types of failures. but I digress.
We learn from failure in those first precious seconds of life. Failure and learning fit together.
This fail/learn combo continues with rolling over, sitting up, crawling, and walking. It doesn’t seem to ever cease, but then we develop further and for lack of a better overall phrase, life gets in the way. As kids, we avoid recognition of failure because we don’t want to get into trouble with our parents. Who did this? The invariable response is “not me!” My dad used to always tell my sister and I that this “not me” kid is always responsible for wrongdoings. Some of us will learn from those failures even when we don’t admit them, but we lack accountability. With a lack of accountability comes the non-recognition of failure. And that leads to missing a huge opportunity to learn and improve. That mentality stays with us into adulthood and all hell breaks loose. Why? That’s a complex question and the reasons are plentiful. We may even have different reasons, but recognition is critical. Here are a few thoughts.
We avoid admitting failure to ourselves. Why? It may seem so trivial that we subconsciously avoid it. That is a breeding ground for a snowball effect of tiny failures. We may fear change. We may not even want to change. The reason may be self-fulfilling. We want to be perfect and admitting failure strays us from that path. Not to sound cliché, but none of us are perfect. And we won’t even get close to perfect if we can’t understand that. Recognition of failures starts with the self, but it gets much harder from here once you add other humans to the equation.
We avoid admitting failure to our family and friends. Why? We want to maintain a certain image. We fear that we may be looked at differently or even lose a relationship. And that’s tough. But if a family member or friend can’t understand you are simply trying to improve, should you give them the time of day? That’s harsh, but seriously, your growth is paramount. Without that growth and a “failure is okay” mindset, our jobs and/or careers are impacted.
We avoid admitting failure to our colleagues. Why? Well, all the reasons above plus the fear of being reprimanded at work. Or worse yet, losing our job. And this one goes beyond the self. Individual departments within an organization hide failures for fear of looking bad in front of the organization. And the blame game ensues. Often, the time it takes to place blame is longer than actually learning from the mistake and fixing it. The latter leads to improvement of the department and the overall organization. Sure, there are extreme cases that must be dealt with, but this behavior should not be the norm. We see this in the public sector as well.
We avoid admitting failure to the world. This is similar to business in the private sector, but the scale and stakes are far larger. Why do we avoid it? Votes. Re-elections. We don’t want our side to look bad and give the other side ammunition. I’m going to stop there so this section doesn’t turn into a book.
Here’s the deal. My intention is not to call out every single human being on the planet. There are plenty of individuals that have the “learn from failure” mentality. I do, but I tend to forget it at times. This article is meant to serve as a reminder to recognize behavior within us and others. That recognition leads to improvement for all of us. It’s easy to fall back to defense mechanisms when others are on offense. But if we don’t start somewhere and try to get better as a species, the infinite churn will continue resulting in animosities, less than optimal progression, and worse, outright stagnation.
Cheers to improving!
Chris