YOU ARE NOT DEFINED BY YOUR FAILURE
Something about that doesn’t sound quite right. Allow me to fix that for you
I often hear people tell others: "You are not defined by your failures". Variations of this statement include: "You are not your mistakes/Your past does not define you". We’d much rather define people by their successes or their achievements. But I question the rationality in that. How can we define ourselves by our successes, but not our failures, when they’re two ends of the same thread?
To me, it seems largely dishonest to say that people aren’t their failures. When we attend a conference where Jeff Bezos is speaking and he is introduced as "The CEO of Amazon and the richest man alive", he is being defined by his success. Or when we talk about famous people like Bill Gates or Lionel Messi or Paul Graham, we are literally defining them by their achievements. It’s why we honor them.
Yet, we all have that one friend who when he/she has messed up big time, we find ourselves reassuring them with; "don’t worry, you are not your mistakes" but he is his achievements?
Everyone only likes to think about humans in terms of their potential for greatness and not their potential for disaster? Why is that so, when we have so many examples of how it can go very wrong. Think Hitler. Think Ted Bundy. Think Buhari.
VALUES
So what other metric do we define ourselves by? One of my favorite writers Mark Manson proposes that we define ourselves by our values. And this is actually much healthier. Rather than defining yourself by your net worth or degrees or your social media following, we should strive to measure ourselves in terms of things that are intrinsic; our values. So we ask ourselves how honest and kind we are. Do we possess integrity, and hardwork? Or are we selfish and lazy? These are the things that really matter. Because in the long term, these values actually contribute to your success or the lack of it. Plus a person could have a million dollars and still be a very shitty person.
And that is exactly the problem with values.
How many times has someone looked at Lionel Messi or Will Smith or Bill Gates and thought; "I wonder how honest he is". Sure they’re hardworking and smart and ambitious, but that’s as guaranteed as it gets. No one actually knows for sure or really cares to deeply consider what kind of humans are these. Or imagine reassuring that your friend with; "You may have failed Math, but at least you’re still a very kind person" Yeah. Doesn’t work. (P.S: this may actually work, but only if that person comes to an internal realization that they are defined by their values. Once we shift the goalpost from external metrics to the intrinsic measures that our values, then we are not so easily shaken by our failures. However this is something we can only do by ourselves).
We can only define ourselves by our values. But when it comes to how we define the rest if the world, It seems that we are hardwired to place the benchmark on success or failure.
ACCURACY
One thing I find worthy of pointing out is the accuracy of labels. Yes, labels help us to define people, but we must be careful to not overestimate and over apply their meanings.
For instance, I don’t believe that "Second-class student" equals "second-class lawyer". The "second class student" label only means one thing; that there is a class of students who are better than you; better at being students. No more, no less. More often than not, law exams measure your ability to memorize and reproduce knowledge, whereas in real practice, most lawyers do not necessarily need all that knowledge to work excellently. Grades are also subject to different factors like the marker’s peculiarities, timing, invigilating, even luck. Sometimes, the metrics used to produce certain labels aren’t accurate. Thus, we must be careful to not overestimate the boundaries of a certain label when defining ourselves, or others.
SO ARE WE OUR FAILURES?
I could answer that question straightaway, but I feel the answer is better illustrated with a short story.
"Another night sleeping at the bus station. Gardenzio misses his home. He misses his wife. But that was a long time ago. Before he lost everything and became penniless. Before he started wandering the streets. Before he stole his wife’s jewellery and sold it just to get a little cash. He casts his mind back. Sure he was born with a slightly deformed lower lip which caused his speech to be slurred. Sure he was a terrible student, always got into fights and got suspended many times. Sure he couldn’t hold a job. Couldn’t even get cast to be a waiter in a movie, or just an extra in the restaurant. But he would never have believed it would get this bad; homeless, broke, hungry, and sleeping in the bus station. The only thing he has is his dog. The poor thing whimpers in pain. It’s hungry but Gardenzio has nothing to feed it. Tomorrow, he will sell the dog for $40 to make some little money to sustain himself. The year is 1975, and it is Hell."
What I would like to establish from this story above is that Gardenzio is a failure. So thoroughly failed, that if you met him, it would be downright dishonest to tell him that he was not a failure. But the story continues;
"Gardenzio would eventually watch a fight between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner. He would be inspired and would go on to write a movie script inspired by that fight in just 3 days. He would then go take that script to several studios to make a movie. One of them accepted and he played the lead role in the movie. The year is 1976, and Gardenzio’s movie would gross over 225 million dollars making it the highest grossing movie of the year. The movie would be called "Rocky", and Gardenzio who is more commonly known as "Sylvester Stallone" would become an extremely successful actor."
The story of Sylvester Stallone serves to teach two important and slightly related things;
1. The under-defining nature of failures: There is a certain erroneous belief of permanence, that society tends to ascribe to the nature of people’s failures. We acts like it’s game over once you’re branded a failure. But human memory is short, and history is filled with examples of people who were failures and rose to great heights like Gardenzio.
I wouldn’t explicitly say "You are not your failures", but I’d say it’s much more accurate and safer, to "underestimate the scale and impact of your failure".
2. The over-defining nature of success: The lesson here is simple;
"All you need is one win."
Human memory is short. One win in one area of your life, and a million of your failures are forgotten. In fact, the things that we were shameful about you, the utterly despicable things that made society brand you a failure, suddenly take on a new adjective. They suddenly become "inspiring". No one looks at a beggar and gets inspired by his penury. But look at Sylvester Stallone, the fact that he stole from his wife, that he sold his dog(eventually bought it back), that he once acted in soft porn movies just to make money to get by, all of these things become inspiring because he "rose above" them. Almost anything can become inspiring when looked at through the lens of success.
Success does not just define, it over defines.
There are many lessons which failure serves to teach us, but the most important of which, is that we do not give up.
The reason this matters is because we over attribute too much of success to people and their personality, and not enough to time/phases. There were people who were failures and became successful, but the reverse is also true, for people and corporations as well. Think OJ Simpson. Think Blackberry.
So there aren’t any innate failures or successes. There are simply people who are currently failing, and people who are currently succeeding.
So are we our failures? Well, did Sylvester Stallone’s failure define him? Yes, until he succeeded. So our failures define us until we succeed. So it is extremely important that we keep going. However low it is now. Don’t give up.
“Your failure does not define you, only as long as you succeed."
There! Fixed it for you.
