Next stop, failure-station
Isn't it amazing that Rocky Loses in "Rocky"?(What's that? You didn't know? Oops sorry, retro spoiler alert, I guess.)
He tries his best, trains like a madman, jumps over a park bench.
He almost wins...aaaand no, he doesn't.
I mean, he does: in the public eye, physically, financially, he definitively wins…but it's still technically a failure.
Failure (and fear of failure) is a strong incentive on why we do or do not go ahead with projects.
Only 6.02 percent of the US adult population owns a business as their main job. It seems pretty low for the “country of opportunities”. Especially now.
With all the knowledge, network and fundings available online, there's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur (business failure dropped 30% since 1977)(Source: fitsmallbusiness.com).
Yet, people don't start because they could fail.
On the other extremity, superstar entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Peter Diamantis advocate (I paraphrase) “failure as a goal”. Progress has to be exponential and "If you don't fail, you're not trying hard enough".
Somewhere between the wantrepreneurs and the moon-aimers, there's you and me: we're creators, we have dreams and projects to realize them.
Failure is there and we're not quite sure wether to fear or worship it.
A healthier relationship with failure should make projects progress, not freeze. Read on for my take on what it looks like.
Careful, there’ll be sex and incorrect movie references.
CAPES: My Rocky Story
First, let me share my "I-failed-but-it-was-awesome” story. Spoiler alert, it's the same as all the others: I failed but in the end, it was great.
Idk, it's just protocol I guess. Skip to Reach for the stars if you've read enough of them.
I won't get offended.
Rocky 2: The Salon Stallion
CAPES is the French exam required to teach in middle and high-school.
It has an acceptance rate of around 10% depending on the year and subject.
Plus, if you're a musicology major, it's your only career option.
So there's pressure, tears, and competitivity (and sex, keep reading).
I was far from the top 10% at school start: I had spent the previous year as an Erasmus musicology student. My classes included "salsa band singing", "80ies cover band guitar playing” and, for the music history class, Professor Gross (true story) asked me which grade I needed.
So yeah, that was pretty awesome.
Except that, meanwhile, my fellow students were studying hard and developing their ear training, listening technique (analyze and date an unknown piece of music) & choir direction.
When the school started, I was way behind in those 3 key skills (and more).
Contrary to the other students, however, I hadn't put pressure on this exam for a whole year, so I was starting fresh.
I, therefore, proceeded to Rocky the whole year. I trained hard, beat some steaks and led a study group with better students than me.
Also, I was long-distance dating a polish girl at the time, so I put all the time which would've been dedicated to looking for love or nurturing the relationship into the study.
And...I did it!
I was shortlisted for the second round of selection, leaving behind 80% of the contestants, nation-wide.
I was Rocky (in Rocky 2), the outsider who did it. My classmates called me "El Ojo del Tigre". I felt like the stallion of my home-town Salon.
I had won.
I didn't fail.
Because when you train hard enough, you DON’T fail.
Right?
Rocky 1: How I failed
I worked even harder in preparation for the second round.
Again study groups, again training while others were partying, again, doing the best I could and 20% above that.
Surprisingly, my long-distance no-maintenance relationship failed.
I dedicated all the resulting time to studies and being sexually used by my MILF neighbor.
I gotta tell you.
Once I was coming back from a failed party and saw a light in my neighbor's room. I knocked on the door to have a talk and this happened ( I swear):
She invited me in, told me I looked tired (which I was because of intense studying sessions), proposed me a massage and proceeded to use me as a dildo.
Isn't life amazing sometimes? (no it's amazing all the time, we just forget).
Anyway.
When the time came, I went to the testing facility on the other side of the country. I had learned all I could and was considered a favorite by my teachers.
I even LOOKED like a music teacher (there's a saying "bald with a goatee, ready to teach harmony").
Then it was my turn, I was on time, I did my thing and it was over.
I wasn't super-pumped about my performance, but I showed I had worked hard and delivered accordingly.
The weeks passed, I filled the terrible wait with more sex with my neighbor including a "you have to come within 2 minutes" experiment I dreadfully remember to this day.
A classmate told me he passed out during his exam and I couldn't stop the voice in my head going ("well I' m at least in front of THIS guy").
Finally the results were published.
There were 200 people in Round 2.
The first 100 became music teachers.
I was 105th.
My name wasn't on the list.
My fainting friend’s was.
Dude, I was lost.
So pissed. So disappointed. So confused.
I had failed.
Sure, I was still "El Ojo del Tigre" for my friends and everybody was like “that's not fair"...but I had failed.
And it wasn't like Rocky either: I was jobless, moneyless, futureless and even fuckbuddyless (I had failed the 2 minutes test, she lost interest).
It took me 6 years to get over it.
Ok, even now as I'm writing this, a part of me is like "those fucking judges can't recognize a good music teacher when they see one, I DID lead the choir right!".
I really didn't know what to do with my life. So I just moved on.
In the dark.
Rocky meets Adrian
I had a gig booked in Avignon Theater Festival with a band I had joined to blow some steam between study sessions (before meeting the neibhor).
From there it went pretty fast.
We went to Avignon,
I met a girl,
She told me to come visit her in Prague.
I said “yolo”.
It went well, she asked me if I wanted to stay.
I said “k, lol".
It was supposed to last 3 months.
That was in 2006 and I'm still in Prague. The girl is now my wife. She's in the next room, holding our second son as I'm writing.
So there you have it, the biggest failure of my life gave me a wonderful family that I deeply love. Later, it also solved my career and money problem, freed me of 14 kg of fat and replace it with muscle, taught me 2 additional languages and the importance of mindfulness.
I told you from the start: “I failed but in the end, it was great.”
I should be 100% with Elon, Jeff and, Peter on "aiming high and failing hard"...but I'm naaht (yes it's a reference to The Room, incidentally also a huge failure bringing lasting success).
Here’s why.
Reach for the stars
Coaches and online self-help gurus around the world have analyzed how top performers like Tony Robbins, Elon Musk or Peter Diamantis achieve supra-human deeds.
Their goals are way more ambitious than the competition, removing a good chunk of it by the same occasion. “I don’t get a lot of competition in the forging-station-in-space business” was saying Diamantis in Tim Ferriss’podcast .
They also advocate exponential over incremental growth: aiming at 10x increase, not 10%.
Consequently they have to adapt their relationship to failure. Not only do they not fear it, they actively look for it.
Amazon is continually experimenting with every element of its business equation. Their wins are spectaculars (kindle) but so are their fails (amazon phone).
Elon’s company are arguably the sexiest in the world now but both nearly went bankrupt.
Exponential power
As most people, I have a ton of respect for those moon-aimers and their exponential approach to projects. In fact, I even tried it for myself.
In 2016, I decided to double my income by the end of the year.
Ok, it's not x10 but still, far more adventurous than my usual +5%...especially because when I took this decision (and started sharing it with people for added pressure), I had no clue how I'd achieve it.
This put me in a very particular mindset the whole year and influenced me in at least one big decision: investing 1.5 time my salary into a business course.
There were other factors, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have dropped that amount of money hadn't I committed at the year start.
In case you wonder, I didn't double my income that year.
I failed...
and only increased by 40%.
8 times the usual increase!
That's the exponential power: failure still means a huge progress.
“If you want to be a rockstar, move to LA”
My problem with this aproach is the sacrifices it requires.
A famous musician I respect (let's call him Neil) once wrote that “if you want to make it in music, you need to move to a big music center” (London, LA or NYC). According to Neil, there's no way around it. If you want to play in garage and bars, stay home, if you want to be a rockstar, move to LA.
In those days, I was working in a call-center and yes, wanted to be a rockstar.
I was spending most of my time developing my own orchestra: recruiting, writing, arranging, rehearsing, promoting etc.
This was the reason I wasn't starting a business, a family or developing my career: this orchestra was my future. I was taking it as such and spending no effort.
Neil’s article implying all this work was misinvested had me take a hard look at how serious I was concerning my rockstar goal.
I stopped what I was doing and seriously considered a move to LA and what it would mean:
Leaving Prague and my girlfriend,
Arriving in the Big City,
Finding a place to stay, a job to pay the bill, band members, rehearsal space.
A social circle to stay sane.
Patiently and carefully building the pro network.
And finally, after a years of hard work in a super competitive environment, maybe having a shot.
The by-the-book definition of thinking big.
So what happened?
I never moved to LA, and I was never on MTV.
But,
the orchestra was successful: we gigged, we toured, we signed some tits, we had fun. I was never a rockstar but I surely felt like one a few times.
I also scored music for AAA video games, radio, and national TV.
More importantly I realized that there was something I wanted more than being a rock star: Peacefulness.
I figured if I’m unable to pause and be happy in the here & now, the external circonstances don’t really matter.
So many depressed comedians, alcoholic rockstars and overstressed entrepreneurs. I don’t want to be them.
I’m not ready to sacrifice peacefulness in the name of success.
So I worked toward THIS goal and reached it, although like a long-distance relationship it needs regular maintenance.
It, actually became a central part of my work, what I think I can bring to the world: tie together peacefulness and creativity.
After months of consideration, hiring world experts in name choice and sacrificing a few baby goats to the altar of the creative gods, I finally came up with a perfect title to connect peacefulness and creativity.
…
peacefulcreativity.com
Creation is often associated with torment, pain and sacrifice but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Yes, creativity IS a great help in difficult times that can birth beauty from pain…but it’s as awesome when life is good!
There’s a lot of happy entrepreneurs and artists: their story is simply less appealing to the media so they get less coverage.
Of course, if I had gone to LA and make it, my story would be different and there’s no way of knowing the absolute best option.
My point is
the exponential way is not the only way to reach your goal and reaching your goal is not the only way to live a happy life.
In fact, if you don’t enjoy the path to your goal, you’ll probably feel disappointed when you reach it.
I could never do that
Despite what I just wrote, if we consider a line going from
inactivity due to fear of failure
to
the exponential approach,
Tending toward the latter is more likely to bring positive outcome in a project.
I know this because I was a wantrepreneur from 2014 till 2017. I was reading tons of articles & books, talking about building a business a lot and even experimenting a bit…but I never really launched anything.
I believed this son-of-a-bitch image you probably saw before
“If everything I do is not perfect, I’ll fail, because there’s only 2 ways: one leads to success, the other one to failure.”. That’s what I thought.
I was careful not to fail, I was very careful and it was a mistake.
Cripling perfectionism if you will, spending too much time on every detail. Tired and frustrated I would then put the project on hold and start something else.
The result: no result.
No product, no customer, no conversion.
Luckily, I then saw an image that changed my relationship with failure.
Next stop, failure station
You don’t fear Malostranska when you go from Dejvicka to Mustek. It’s just a station you need to go through.
Likewise, you don’t have to fear failure when you go from where you are to Success.
The trip is just longer than expected…because we have to go through all those “failure-stations”.
For me, this destroys the fear of failure.
Refusing a project because you could fail is like refusing to run obstacle race because there’s obstacles: it’s part of the deal.
The good news is, it’s also true on a macro level: all these past failures are stations you already went through.
If you’ve taken notes, you can probably avoid going back.
If you didn’t, you’ll go through more quickly.
But also maybe the project will be a complete failure and you'll take the lesson to the NEXT project. In that case, the project itself is a failure-stop on your way to success-town.
A healthy relationship with Failure
Going in this article, you already knew that failure is good. That's the trending thing to say in the entrepreneur world.
And I agree to a point, because I don't see a single failure in my life that hasn't had a positive outcome eventually (even if it took years to realize).
However aiming at the moon might result in sacrifice you don’t want to make.
I don't believe you have to go all-in to succeed and more importantly to be happy. You don't need to cut your ear to be a master painter or to have your family killed to be a master cinematographer.
You’re a creator. You have goals and projects to realize them. Paving the way are failures…They can be a reminder that the path IS the goal.
The people you meet, the lessons you learn, the evenings you spend bitching about what’s not going your way with the people who care about you.
That is the goal and you don’t have to go to LA for that.
I now have the same relationship with failure than with Hippies: I don’t actively look for one, but I don’t mind if I meet one on my way to success.
I wrote several times “I think” in this article, here's what I know: If I had gone the exponential route, left my beloved girlfriend and city, maybe I’d be the new Trent Reznor...but I wouldn't have 2 sons that bring me this undescribable joy when I look at them.
It's a matter of priorities,
But don't take my word for it, listen to Stephen King:
Life isn’t a support system for art.
It’s the other way around.
