Growth is All About Failure
In occident, we have been trained to avoid failing from the youngest age. The fear of having bad school grades was the beginning of this never-ending pressure of performance. It is a social phenomena, not a personal one.
Embracement vs Fear
As a human being, I think it is important to understand what failure gives us as opportunities rather than what our society makes us think of it. Occident governances say:
“High grades is all that matters.”
“Under-performing is to be avoided at all cost or you will have a poor future.”
Let me say this: “It is BULLSHIT”.
It has never been that false. The real importance behind school is learning and growth, not grades and performance. Fear of assessments does not stimulate growth, it frustrates with negative pressure which is really unhealthy as it inhibits motivation and natural growth.
Motivation vs Pressure
In Finland, they suggest this:
“Learning goals and the criteria for good ability levels are defined in the curriculum. Teachers will talk to pupils about the goals they want to set themselves. One problem has previously been that pupils have not always known why they were given a certain grade. When they are actively involved in such discussions their motivation will grow.” explains Anneli Rautiainen.
In fact, behind everything we do, all that matters is motivation. I recently learned that through my own struggles with my ambition. I have tried to create so many projects. Despite my efforts, 95% of them failed to grow until recently. I found that pressure was the main inhibitor. I was fearing to fail any new initiative or I was trying too hard to make something happen and to motivate people to join up. Nothing was working.
The metaphor of water helped me solving my problems. Rather than swimming against the current to reach unrealistic goals, I stopped and studied the ‘water’ around me. With a better understanding of the situation, I let myself float giving all the power to the current forces I was surrounded by. As a result, I created a side project collective, I have launched a successful and evolving product with 4 collaborators and I have been writing more than 25,000 words in 45 days, including 13 blog posts about my experience and knowledge and an upcoming novella.
Believing vs Doubt
The most important thing behind success is to believe in what you do. Like the energetic influencer Gary Vaynerchuk, “you have to believe in what you sell”. That is what I did. By understand the situation, the timing and the circumstances, I was able to work on relevant projects in which I really believe in in order to sell it to others and mostly to myself. It’s a loop!
Selling is just the art of showing and talking about what you really believe in. What is important, is believing in you and what you do, whether it is a product you launch, a painting you have been doing or a blog post you have written. Talking about it empowers you and gives you confidence which drives motivation and growth.
Grades vs Personal Growth
You do not need grades to be proud of what you do. You surely don’t need grade to learn and grow. Grades are just grades. Knowledge is everything and makes you grow. Growth is just cumulating ammunitions for your career and for your life.
However, not everything you do has a real potential. The timing and the circumstances are often awful. Like I said, swimming against the current is the worst thing you can do. If you have serious doubts about what you do, stop to make a point. Make a pause to see more clearly what the situation is. Your own assessment is worth everything because you understand why you decide to continu or not. You might find a new way to approach your initiative or decide to stop everything. By experience, I can tell with confidence that there is nothing worst than forcing a project to happen when everything points toward the garbage. It is not necessarily because you are not good or what you do has no real potential: it’s mostly due to timing, circumstances and fit. Fortunately, failure open doors on more learning and growth, on success stories.
Fail Fast & Learn
It’s really OK to fail. You know why? Because you learn out of experience, not assumptions. The worst thing you can do is to do everything via hypothesis. Living in your own head is cozy but being afraid to fail will get you less feedback, which is crucial to learn and grow.
The first draft of anything is shit. — Ernest Hemingway
In order to avoid working too much on something that will not work, agile methodology suggest a smart way to approach any initiative: failing fast. All you need to do is to quickly come up with a clear definition of what you want to do, show it and get feedbacks. Talk to people and let them point what is not working. Iterate and show an improved version of your idea.
The more you apply this method, the more you will know what an idea is worth. If after five iterations you still have serious doubt about it, put it to garbage. The advantage of it would be the fact that you will not lose too much time and effort on it and most of all, you will spare your sanity.
Final Thought
Is is absolutely healthy to embrace failure and to kill the fear that surrounds it. Because it is a powerful tool to unleash creativity, productivity and most of all, fast growth. Sparks of genius are rare and it is not a modal to based your success upon. Get feedbacks faster and grow quickly.
Global success is not the only success. You might not get 10,000 likes on Facebook or get 50,000$ with what you do, but for your own experience, believing in what you do and show the world what you do is worth everything. After all, all we look for is accomplishment.
If you are interested in education, here are a couple of interesting links upon which I based my research. Also, feel free to look at my other articles since I share all my processes, my learning and my growth.
I learned a lot about education as an UX designer for Scolab, an awesome and young company from Montreal I worked for that builds motivating applications to learn mathematic based on each student’s pace.
Netmath in Canada
Buzzmath in the United States
Global Math Week
