Paul Williams DCA - Fail Brilliantly: Exploding the Myths of Failure and Success

Copyright 2017 by Shelley Davidow and Paul Williams

All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

2017941394

Print ISBN 9781945547256

Ebook ISBN 9781945547614

Printed in the United States of America

Edited by Katharine Hale

Cover design by David Miles

Book design by Brooke Jorden

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

If youve ever felt like a failure, this book is for you.

I have not failed. Ive just found 10,000 ways that wont work.

Thomas Edison

Failure is just another name for much of real life.

Margaret Atwood

There are scads of self-help books on how to succeed, but Ive never come across a single one on how to contend with not succeedingwhich is more the form for practically everybody, right?

Lionel Shriver

Introduction

From Blunders to Catastrophes:

The Unexpected Outcome as a Force That Shapes Us

D espite your best efforts and learning from past failures, you have failed to become the success you dreamt of being. You have pasted Never Give Up signs on your bathroom mirror, and you feel you have been at it 24/7 since you were at school. But after bad luck and a series of unanticipated disasters in this competitive world, you realise that there is the very real possibility that this is it. The successful life you have imagined for yourself may never materialise.

So now what?

We live in a binary world of success and failure. Many of us wouldnt just think of ourselves as on the roadliving through and facing adversity and making the best of what comes to us. We most often think of ourselves as either successes or as failures. But were caught in an illusion. Were not on a journey to a single successful destination. Were just on a journey, though were taught every day by society to measure our lives against our expectations and the expectations of others. And much of this causes us painfrom the time we set foot in a school classroom, to the time we dont get the job we interviewed for, to the time we lose all our money on a tumbling stock market. We spend time beating ourselves up about poor decisions, about not succeeding, and we transfer that to our colleagues, our partners, our children.

Our mammal brains drive us towards the taste of success. Our so-called failures can paralyse us because we are wired to avoid things that cause disappointment. Though bloggers and psychologists rave on about the gifts of failure, it is still essentially a societal negative. The world frowns on us getting things wrong. We are constantly graded and branded according to the evidence of our successes: academic achievement, social standing, the cars we drive, how much money we make.

Yet the fabric of failure is an intricate and essential aspect of our existence.

Big failures often result in side events that arent measurable: transformation, shifts in perspective and valueseven if the goals themselves are never reached. From doomed explorers to aborted moon landings to novels that were rejected a dozen times, this book looks at failure as an integral part of human existence and dissolves many of the illusions surrounding failure that we have come to believe. It reveals a new approach to contending with all kinds of failures.

Degrees of Failure

One significant problem we face is that we use failure as a blanket term, which can be very confusing because not all failures are created equal. When we talk about failure these days, we lump everything together as if a failed test or business venture has the same value or impact as a failed medical intervention or the failure of an aircraft to arrive at its destination.

So for the purpose of clarity, we have divided failure into three broad categories, which allows us to look at these so-called failures in new ways.

First-Degree Failures...

are the most devastating. These are the failures that result in total disasters and loss of lifefor example: planes that fail to make it to their destinations; medical errors that result in someone dying or being irrevocably harmed; failure of an emergency service to arrive on time, resulting in disaster; failure of justice, resulting in the wrong person being convicted of a crime.

These failures have irredeemable results. People die; things are damaged beyond repair. We can hardly celebrate these failures or commend the people involved as having failed brilliantly. If we learn anything from them, it is that, at all costs, we want to prevent similar failures from happening ever again.

Second-Degree Failures...

are those where a significant goal is set but not met. For example, the Apollo 13 mission to the moon, which was aborted but did not result in any loss of life, or Ernest Shackletons 19141916 doomed voyage across Antarcticaall twenty-eight men on the journey lived, though they lost everything and never achieved their goal of crossing the continent. These second-degree failures are the adventurous or scientific journeys where one outcome is expected but another unforeseen one occurs; they are the failures of artists and researchers and writers and anyone trying to create something that has not been created before.

These failures, unlike first-degree failures, often spawn unexpected innovations, collaborations, and new ideas and lead to personal growth, development, hidden benefits, and lessons of a kind that only surviving the harshest circumstances can. These failures are commendable as having intrinsic value, as being catalysts for transformation, as bringing new and valuable knowledge to the world. They are worth celebrating. In fact, these failures should not even be termed failures, because they bypass all the words carefully constructed definitions.

Third-Degree Failures...

are the ones we decide are failures. They are distinctly subjective, and our responses to them have as much to do with biology and physiology as with the actual failure itself. They are the failed tests, the failure to get into the university course of our choice, the failure to make enough money, or create a successful business, or be a successful writer, or meet specific targets set by our bosses or ourselves. These failures often make us feel terrible about ourselves. We are frequently unable to separate ourselves and our own value from these failures.

These failures have parameters that are randomly imposed by us, and the line dividing a so-called pass or success from failure is drawn whimsically wherever we think to draw it. When we set ourselves goalspersonal, financial, academicwe unconsciously create a system of potential failures, and so its best to understand the risk inherent in aiming for success.

Malcolm Gladwell thoroughly points out in his book Outliers that the people, the athletes, the social entrepreneurs, the businessmen who succeed in terms of our material definitions of success in the world do work hardbut in every case he examines, there exists a lucky break, a chance meeting that led to that hard work paying off. And he demonstrates how there are those geniuses who never got the lucky break, still living their unremarkable lives despite their brilliance and hard work. Their incredible ideas and creations never saw the light of day or resulted in material success. Its a fact: bad luck and twists of fate have prevented many talented human beings from being rewarded for their efforts, either financially or in terms of recognition. Most of us can probably identify with that to some degree.