Failure is Valuable Experience

Tangled Up & You

My partner made a joke about me recently, pointing out how some of the ways you write the letter “G” could look like a circular arrow. We decided if I was an old-school rancher, my brand would have been “The Confused Arrow” and I’d never lose any cattle because they’d always circle back eventually…

This is why I was pretty pleased when Banksy (the amazing street artist) recently tweeted this little gem:

[caption id=”attachment_2396" align=”aligncenter” width=”600"]

Confused Arrow? Or the scenic route?[/caption]

It’s a useful reminder, especially during those times that inevitably come where we aren’t really sure what to do next, or if what we’re doing is going to get us where we need to go. The Narrative Fallacy is this idea that one thing inevitably leads to another in any story of success — but the reality is far different. It’s not the only thing that could have happened — it’s just what happened.

And almost every entrepreneur, hero, successful artist or parent will most likely admit that there were times when they really had no idea what was going on, they were just doing the best they could. One of the ways to make it easier on ourselves when we’re dealing with that kind of thing is to reframe it away from being “lost” (or even, as Davy Crockett put it, “A mite bewildered…”) and rather look at it as valuable information.

I either win, or I learn. I never lose.

It’s a well-known basis of the new economy that “whoever fails fastest succeeds first.” Not counterintuitive if you remember that every failure is accompanied by picking themselves up and trying again. Nor is it a new idea; Winston Churchill famously said:

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

After a few months where I was feeling like I was on the squiggled path, today the direction of my next steps in professional development came clear to me. It’s possibly not accidental that they coincided with my finishing the first edit of The Defining Moment book. While things are beautifully clear now (a path laid with an amazing number of to-do’s) the most gratifying part is knowing that all the weeks when I just put my head down and did the next thing have paid off, and I’m in a position now to do far more than I ever knew possible back there in the tangle.

If you’re in the tangle yourself, don’t worry. There’s more out there. And if you aren’t…spare a moment of mercy and empathy for those who are. All who are lost, after all, do not wander.