Did you ever notice that you learn much more from the losses than the wins? Sometimes learning “the hard way” makes the lesson stick more. As I’ve said before, it’s when you’re losing that you learn what you’re made of and who your real friends are.
Yet we don’t hear this message much from society. Losses are something to be feared. Every kid has to get a trophy. It is almost as if you admit to a loss you become a loser permanently and will forever carry the stigma around with you.
I’ve also noticed that a lot of parents today are so protective of their kids that they never want to see them experience pain of any kind – including the pain of failure. This may make the kids feel better in the short term, but it will cost them dearly in the long run. Life is tough – sooner or later they are going to run into failures that Mommy and Daddy can’t protect them from, and if they never learned how to deal with it appropriately it will crush them.
My daughter showed me a great article* a couple weeks ago about the start-up scene in Mexico City. The story was interesting, but my favorite part was the following quote:
Two years ago, a group of startup geeks were drinking in a Mexico City bar, lamenting that all anyone in the scene wanted to talk about was successes, when the world of business is built on failures. Talking out what went wrong was crucial to making sure next time it would go better, they decided. They began hosting monthly meetings in Mexico City called “F— Up Nights,” where entrepreneurs could share their missteps. These days, there are [events] held in 100 cities across the world in almost every continent. At a recent gathering in Mexico City, the sold-out event had to turn away people at the door eager to hear business leaders discuss their failures.
“It’s not that we want to teach people about failure,” said Yannick Kwik, the organization’s spokesman. “We are a little bored with success stories everywhere, especially when most companies fail.”
These guys took it to the next level – they not only admitted their failures publicly in a society as obsessed with success as our own, they also realized how much they could learn from their failures and from studying others’ failures.
These are the lessons we miss if we constantly treat failure as something to fear. I’ll be honest with you – I don’t like failure much either. Like everyone, I would much rather be winning than losing. But there are two ways I look at failure that I think are valuable to anyone: I don’t let the fear of failure stop me from trying, and when I fail I go back and try to learn from it, even if it was a painful loss.
If you aren’t willing to risk failure, you will never challenge yourself to reach the full extent of your capabilities. Put yourself out there, accept that sometimes you will fail, and commit to learning from your losses when you have them.
In the long run, accepting the risk of failure is the only way to success.
Have a great weekend,
Ro
*http://www.ibtimes.com/mexico-city-next-silicon-valley-how-mexicans-became-obsessed-unicorns-2317659; accessed 3/24/16
I would like to wish everyone a Happy Easter! Due to the holiday there will be no Words of Encouragement next week.