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Success is mostly about failing a lot
Saturday, 27 August 2005
Woody Allen once said "Seventy percent of success in life is showing up". It seems obvious, but convincing yourself to follow this advice can sometimes be difficult.
We tend to see a successful person as some type of freak - lucky individuals who somehow never messed up. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most successful people have had many failures. What distinguishes them from their less successful peers is that they had enough determination to pick themselves up and keep going.
When we hear about a new successful person - whether in sport, business or the arts - they often appear to come from nowhere. One day you've never heard of them, and the next their name seems to be everywhere. What you don't see, and what the media often doesn't report on, is the many failures that bought them to this point.
We only ever see great sports people, like Tiger Woods, playing spectacularly. We never saw a young Tiger going through the difficult training that all great sports people must undertake. We don't see the missed shots, the poor swing which was improved by training, or the competitions he lost on the way up to the top.
Look into virtually any successful person's background, and you will see a similar story. Some go through devastating losing streaks before hitting on a winner. Take Steve Jobs, who was sacked from Apple, and went on to start the relatively unsuccessful Next software. In the mid-1990s, both Apple and Steve were looked upon as has-beens, but by the mid-2000s, Steve had become CEO of Apple and Pixar and was one of the most celebrated businessmen in the world. Despite all the frustration, humiliation and failure, he plugged on and forced success to return to him.
Fear of failure can be crippling. Our bodies are actually programmed to make us feel bad about it. The reaction to doing badly is physical as well as mental. However, you must overcome this fear. In the long run, those who keep trying despite the inevitable failures, will be the most likely to succeed.
Treat your struggle for success like a winning poker strategy. Most good card-players realize they won't win most hands, so they bet small to begin with. Then, when they see the more rare chance to win, they bet big. This lots of small losses and some big wins strategy can really pay off.
Success is mostly about failing a lot. Get out there and try things out. If at first you don't succeed, try again until you do.
 | A good strategy for learning difficult subjects | | Some things are just difficult to study. They contain complicated facts that are confusing to the uninitiated. Having to learn such things can be a very frustrating experience! What's the best strategy to cope? |  | Don't buy into the "no fear" bulldust | | Okay, stand back and hold your breath. I'm about to question one of the quasi-religious commandments of personal development. It's the one that says fear is all bad and should be overcome. That the aim of life should be to "live without fear", usually followed by some blather about love being the opposite of fear. |  | Be generous to the future | | The future is like a giant spiritual bank account. You can invest in it, or withdraw from it any time you like. How you treat this bank account plays a big part in deciding how successful you are. | | It's hard to appreciate the emotional impact of something until you experience it | | When I was a young adult, the father of a friend of mine passed away. My friend had a very close relationship with his father, and was devastated. He went into a deep depression for a number of months. |  | Perfect contentment leads to stagnation | | Have a look at how so many of us live our lives. We get up in the morning, go out all day and work, work, work. Whether in a rich country or a poor one, a good neighbourhood or bad, you can be sure that most of the people around you will be working most of the time. | | Don't reward bad behavior in yourself and others | | Almost everyone has done things in life that they knew at the time were wrong. But sometimes, there seems to be an overwhelming force pushing towards what we know is going to be a bad outcome. Why can't we control ourselves? | | Recognise the two universes you live in | | One of my favourite works of fiction is His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman. It's about parallel universes that exist, similar to our own but all different. The main characters find doors between these universes and go off on great adventures. | | Find something to live for | | I've just finished reading Viktor Frankl's “Man’s Search for Meaning”, which I think is a very interesting book. Frankl is a neurologist and psychiatrist who has developed a theory called Logotherapy. | | Beef up your mental toolkit | | We are all born with certain reasoning tools which are popularly referred to as "common sense". We know that it's a good idea to avoid pain, for example. | | Accumulate lots of small victories | | When I was at school, a teacher told me an interesting fact. Well, when I say fact, I'm not sure if it was really true. It's more of an interesting allegory. He said that the ancient Romans used to build all their roads in a zig-zag pattern rather than a straight line. |
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