The Value of Failure

On one late afternoon in September of 2019, I held back tears as I walked back to my desk, desperate to not further humiliate myself in front of all my colleagues.. “We’ve decided to offer this opportunity to someone else” still rang in my ears that night as I replayed the meeting from earlier that day with the VP of the company over and over again in my mind. “Where did I miss the mark?” I had asked him, but the answer didn’t matter, really. It didn’t ease the sting of losing the promotion I had labored all year for to someone else. It didn’t lessen the pit in my stomach labeled “rejection”. I had failed. That’s it. It was as I was sobbing in the shower that I realized for the first time how much of my own worth I had wrapped up in the outcome. Now instead of the success I was hoping for, it was the failure that defined me. 

I did get offered a different opportunity only two months later, but by that time I had already resigned to that failure. It became the thing that held me back from taking chances, because I was so afraid to feel that kind of devastation again. I stayed in my lane. I did what was expected of me and nothing more. I only pursued the things that I knew I could do with ease. I didn’t develop or grow for a good year because I was too busy playing it safe to get exposure to anything new.

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If you’ve ever hired a personal trainer with the intent of growing your muscles, you might be familiar with the concept of pushing to failure in the gym in order to build that muscle mass. Not only is failure seen as acceptable, it’s the strategy required to meet your goal. In fact, if you aren’t struggling by the end of your sets and reps, then you’re being held back from making progress towards your goal. While the first few times of collapsing during that last squat or your shoulders giving out during that last press may feel embarrassing, you eventually condition yourself to embrace your failure. 

What if we took that same mindset outside of the gym? What if you went to work or started a project or took a risk not with a fear of failure, but with the acceptance you might fail and the anticipation of the new skills you’ll develop and the things you’ll learn from that failure?If you learn to see your failures as an opportunity, you’ll find that you never truly fail. 

When a toddler falls when trying to walk for the first time, we never respond by saying “this child can’t walk and never will”, we encourage them to get back up and try again because falling is simply part of the process. Just as children learn to walk through a process of falling down again and again, we as adults still learn to get better through our own failings. Failure is not the end; often it’s just the beginning of something greater. You aren’t defined by your mistakes, you’re defined by what you do with them. 

I can’t tell you of any special moment I changed my mind. I think it just happened over time as I learned to practice observing my thoughts and notice patterns and mental ruts. I didn’t realize I was avoiding stepping out of my comfort zone for fear of failure. I didn’t realize how many ideas I never did anything with, how many interests I never pursued simply because I was afraid of not doing it right. That’s not the kind of life I wanted to live; I wanted to live large and I knew that meant changing how I viewed failure. Adopting a new viewpoint equipped me with new tools for not just coping with failure, but getting value from it. 

I shifted my mindset from avoiding failure to seeing it as an opportunity. Want to hear a secret? I didn’t even like my job. I worked for a really amazing employer, but I didn’t find the actual work I did particularly interesting or engaging. I realized that even though I was thankful for all the ways working at this company had helped shape me over the years, I didn’t want to continue down the career path I was on. If I had continued to succeed at everything I tried at this job, I wouldn’t have seen a reason to consider moving in a new direction.

Sometimes it takes the feeling of losing everything due to failure to find the courage to take a risk: when you feel like you have nothing to lose, you’re more likely to take chances and sometimes that can be really good.

When I started seeing failure as a set up instead of a setback, I found that it became a lot harder to get knocked off my feet- failure was no longer falling; it was redirection. 

I started asking questions and approaching my failure with curiosity… Why did this failure hurt so much? What lessons can I learn about myself through this?  I came to realize that not getting that promotion wasn’t as personal as I was taking it; it was a necessary business decision based not on who I was as a person but on a need for certain areas of experience that I hadn’t been privy to yet. I discovered that I desperately needed to learn to accept and value myself apart from what I could do or what I had to offer. I was so focused on achievement that I didn’t realize that I was on a runaway train headed straight towards burnout. I started learning how to take time to rest and find things I enjoyed outside of work so that I could show up better as a more well-rounded and functional employee. 

It’s uncomfortable to meditate on your failures, but the saying rings true: what you fail to learn, you’re doomed to repeat.

If you only replay your victory moments, you’ll never learn anything new, and you’ll never become better than you were the day before. 

I started telling myself that everything I did was “just practicing”. I have another story for you. I recently went ax throwing with friends and let me tell you- I did GREAT… during the practice rounds. Then we started doing the rounds that actually counted, and I completely choked. Every turn I took, I became more and more frustrated, and even embarrassed. I knew the technique I was supposed to use, but for some reason I just couldn’t nail it. Finally I said “I need a break to do a few practice throws and figure out what I’m doing wrong”. My next throw landed right in the center of the target. Why? Because the pressure was off. There was no more performance anxiety, no more fear of coming in last, no more trying too hard.  When we went back to counting points, every time I stepped up to take a turn I told myself “this is just a practice round”. My accurate throws became more consistent. And all it took was maintaining a calm, relaxed state by approaching every turn as if it was just practicing. Everything we do in life is just practice for the next round. 

Learning about these things made me not just a stronger person, but a better leader. As I learned to accept and even welcome my own failures, it became easier to give space for others to learn to do the same. I realized the importance and value of failure. Failure is such a valuable teacher, I don’t want to ever rob the people I lead of that experience. Instead, I’ve learned to be there to help them pick up the pieces, to cheer them on and help them get up, just like a parent does for a child learning to walk. 

So what about you? What can you gain from your failures? Is it the ability to see new opportunities, or practice curiosity? Is it a chance to become a stronger person, a better leader?

Failure is inevitable, but it isn’t final. You and I will spend the rest of our lives facing failures.

Remember what I said at the beginning about failure being the strategy to build muscle mass at the gym? I challenge you to join me in casting off the fear of failure and instead approach it with a sense of eagerness, knowing that what waits on the other side of failure is a stronger you.