Failure is Learning (if you let it)
George Washington, the Father of our Nation, was considered such a military failure in the early days of the Revolutionary War, that he was almost relieved of his command. He lost more battles than he won during the Revolutionary War, and he was beset by failure, betrayal, and defeat during the entirety of his public life.
So how then is George Washington considered one of Our greatest Generals, our Nation’s Founding Father, and our greatest U.S. President? In a word, perseverance, the type of perseverance that is only forged from the hard lessons of failure. Against the British Army, he chose strategic retreat over honorable defeat, he chose to (possibly) fail and then learn from that failure, rather than let his pride lead him to ruin and defeat.
The British lost the Revolutionary War, not to the brilliance and bravado of the Commanding General, they lost the war because Washington would not give up. He would not give in and go away to lick his wounds and say “I tried my best” (no participation awards back then). He simply took his chances and loses, learned from them, and wore the British down, till he could secure ultimate victory.
WHY FAILURE IS IMPORTANT
Failure is important because, as humans, we will do it A LOT in a lifetime. It is to our benefit to learn what failure is, what it can do for us, and how to best benefit from its lessons. Failure is inevitable and perhaps the most important tool we can learn from.
We have to learn HOW to fail, by that I mean how we process failure and learn from it. As a country, we have grown a society of individuals so mentally/emotionally fragile that they cannot process failure. so they no longer try (for fear of failure). All you need to do is to look at the statistics on teenage drug use, teenage pregnancy, high school dropout rates, suicides, divorce, bankruptcy, violent crime, domestic abuse, or the mental health crisis plaguing our society, to know the idea that “everyone gets an award, everyone wins, everyone succeeds” was/is an atrocious one. This is also why equity of outcome, rather than equality of opportunity is so diabolical.
As a young Soldier. I remember going on training maneuvers, and inevitably the last and most important battle simulation was one referred to as the “Russian Hoard”. This hoard was to descend on us with no hope of success or survival (on our part), 24 hours of hopeless warfare. As a young warrior, I always wondered “Why would our Command do that to us, why put us into an obvious no-win situation”, it made no sense to me. After becoming a leader and trainer of Warriors myself, I realized the lesson was not to win but to learn how to lose; and the transformative power of failure.
WHAT FAILURE IS
An important lesson learned from failing is the realization that failure is temporary, it is momentary, as fleeting as success, but its behavioral effects are long-lasting (for better or worse). As my dad would say, “…failure is the opportunity to adjust your aim.” What my father meant was that the objective is your target, and the goals you set up and work towards are your “aiming points” toward that target. Every failure is an opportunity to “tighten your shot group” until you hit the mark. It may seem counterintuitive, but every failure can (when processed properly) optimizes your future success.
“Life lessons are learned in failure, success is confirmation, but failure is where
progress/advancement happens.” VS Miller
As an Army Platoon Sergeant, one of the most important teachings for the men who served under and with me was, it is okay to fail. In fact, it is expected and planned for; exercise to muscle failure for physical fitness, training events planned with the curtailment of food and sleep to exacerbate mental acuity, and mass causality training to disrupt one’s psychological baseline. We did not train to merely induce failure, we worked extra hard to gleam the lessons failing had to teach. John Wooden (the legendary college basketball coach) summed it up best when he said, “…Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be”, especially in combat.
WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM FAILURE
Failure is not the end, (if you do not let it be), but merely a divergence from your target.
Humility; what we learn from failure is humility, and humility is growth. Intellectual growth, emotional growth, and physical growth will only come after failure and learning from it. Growth of one’s understanding, growth of one’s character, and growth of one’s resourcefulness.
Emotional Intelligence; through failure, we can improve and hone our emotional intelligence through the death of our ego (I or self). Let’s be honest failing sucks, it hurts. The more invested we are in an endeavor, the more painful it is when we fail, when in reality the pain of failure (when processed properly) is just another “nail in the coffin” of the self. In his book “The Ego is the Enemy” Ryan Holiday argues that ego leads to failure much more than it does success. It is the ego that will not allow us to learn from our failings.
Power of routine/schedule; failure teaches the importance of time management and establishing a routine. Routine brings momentum, and momentum is more valuable than motivation when you are building character, and establishing habits.
Resiliency; is perhaps the main adaptation of failure, there is no resiliency without failure. Being a resilient person is a “learned” and a “genetic” trait. As none of us can change our genetic makeup, we must concentrate on our learned behavior, and learned resiliency.
After 23 years of military service, having been deployed for every “combat” operation since I joined the Army in 1988 and having trained, raised, and led ten’s of thousands of our Nation’s Warriors, this I know, resiliency must be taught, it must be trained, resiliency must be learned. Warriors are taught that resiliency is not about invincibility, it is about perseverance. I believe the most important key to obtaining your goals, (and thus reaching/obtaining your target) is the principle of Persistence Over Perfection.
You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!” ― Rocky Balboa
HOW TO LEARN FROM FAILURE
You have to believe that failure is not the end (as long as you don’t let it be). Understanding that every failure is an opportunity waiting, a stepping stone to higher ground, is the basis of empowerment.
You have to put the time in (and that means failure after failure). The 10,000-hour rule is a popular ideology that states when you put 10,000 hours practicing deliberately on an activity you can master it. It was introduced by K. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist (and popularized in Malcolm Gladwell’s book entitled ‘Outliers’), the 10,000-hour rule argues that anyone can be an expert in various fields by allotting thousands of hours to become successful in it.
In his book “Black Box Thinking” Matthew Syed argued that to learn from our failures we must have two things, the right mindset, and the right systems.
The right mindset cultivates discipline and perseverance by understanding that successful innovation is impossible without errors and failures. The right mindset is a “growth mindset”, which is to believe your abilities are not fixed. The right mindset allows others and yourself the grace to fail.
The right systems are systems that promote constructive criticism, evaluation and testing of the counterfactual.
Engage in self-care (physical + creativity) and your support system (friends and family) to encourage advancement and tenacity.
Re-assess, refocus, and refine your goals.
FAIL UP
Living an authentic, contented, purposeful life is what I refer to as “Living Fearlessly”. Living fearlessly is to accept you are who you are, and you are where you are due in part to your success and perhaps more importantly due to the lessons learned from your failures.
The fruit of failure is harvested when we enable ourselves to embrace our failed attempts and learn the life lessons failure has to teach us.
The well-known sports maxim about “winning and losing” is perhaps better stated as, “It is not if you win or lose that matters, but “how” (or better yet) what you learn from losing that matters.”
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Be Well
Your Brother in Arms
VS Miller