Redefining Failure
Maybe nine years ago, I placed this post-it note on a window in my room as a reminder for myself to be warry. It said, “if you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room”. And I really carried those words with me. I kept it as a reminder for growth and to constantly challenge myself. Not just for looking for new rooms, challenging the “norm”, creating opportunities that feed my hunger to learn and explore. It’s also a reminder to learn from what's not really known and awareness of the fact that failure is inevitable. If you are not failing are you even doing something worthwhile, new, innovative?! If entering a new space, or a new room is not completely challenging, is it even worth it?!
I have this folder on my hard drive where I store almost all the projects that didn’t really make it to the fruition or even to R&D. Projects that I loved at the moment, I might still love the idea or the solution to the problem that the project carries but something didn’t quite work. Even after pivoting. Even after re-thinking, adjusting and trying several times. I love that folder. I do take time to wander back in there once in a while. As if it was a museum of attempts, seeds, ideas… “If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original,” says Ken Robinson. I look at failure or failing as a teacher, not an undertaker. It’s a moment to reconvene, rethink, re-connect and re-establish, not a dead end. Failure should not be a definition of an outcome yet something that indicates a not trying over and over again.
And yes, I do also think that redefining failure is also about what it means. I always use the example of Christopher Columbus - did he fail? Yes. Was the outcome still a success - also yes. It’s those moments when I feel like I didn’t really end up where I wanted to be original, I need to ask myself - but where am I? What is this outcome telling me?
It was when I was preparing a presentation about creativity last year, I was also revisiting the research about what amazing things came out of failures. For example - several classes of antidepressants owe their discovery to chance, from iproniazid, which was initially used to treat tuberculosis in the 1950s, to the tricyclics of the 1960s, which stemmed from an experimental treatment for schizophrenia and the more recent breakthrough involving the use of ketamine. Or the heart pacemaker - New York engineer Wilson Greatbatch invented the world’s first implantable heart pacemaker – but he didn’t mean to. While trying to build a device to record heartbeats in 1956, he accidentally installed the wrong type of resistor into his prototype – which promptly began to emit regular electrical pulses. And those stories continue and continue. There is a super fun and visual book by Birgit Krols “Accidental Inventions that Changed Our Lives” I would recommend exploring further.
And in the end, I really think it’s all about the mindset - fail better, fail more, fail to improve and grow. “Your journey has moulded you for the greater good. It was exactly what it needed to be. Don`t think you`ve lost time. It took each and every situation you have encountered to bring you to the now. And now is right on time.” (Asha Tyson). I invite you to redefine failure as something that brings opportunities, celebration and perspective!