Success and Failure

Most of us have handed out resumes when searching for a job. One look at the resume and the first thing you notice is that the record is flawless. From Kindergarten to University, nothing is more obvious than how many successes we have had in our lives. Our resumes reflect the age old adage that if you work hard, you can be and do anything you want in life.

If you’ve ever attended reunions what you will hear mostly is how good everyone is doing. The best jobs, the best cars, the best career paths – not one mistake ever.   No hint of failure, just an impeccable, spotless, immaculate life.  It almost seems like everyone is out there to tell everyone else, “Hey look I can do everything well!”

The truth is, for each and every perfectly written resume there are hidden behind these, stories of failure and adversity. If we were to look back, the lessons we learned from adversity are the lessons we keep for a lifetime.  We waver on speaking about our failures perhaps because our culture is more concerned about achievements rather than building character.

Anton Chekov wrote, “One must be God to be able to distinguish successes from failures and not make mistakes.” Success and failure are so intertwined that viewing it is not a matter of saying you either succeed or you fail but more that one succeeds and fails. One’s life is really made up of a series of rough ups and downs that together represent the knife edge that still makes the cut.

Our judgment call for recognizing a person as a success or a failure is oftentimes pronounced too rapidly. So much so that we end up having to eat our words. Winning and losing depend really on so many dynamics such as the economy, weather, public perception- changeable criteria. Speaking about public perception – Bill Gates, branded a success by many was considered a failure by his mother because he dropped out of Harvard. Dropouts have been considered failures especially in countries were educational attainment is part of the achievement culture. But then looking at how Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have done and are doing so far, in which category do we place them in now. Do we position them as failures or as successful individuals?

In hindsight, we discover that failures lead to success and the other way around. Many best selling ideas or items from the past decades are now hidden away in some taped up box in the attic that is never to be opened up again. We had things like Wordstar and Wordstar Pro, floppy discs, pagers, and espadrilles (a light shoe with a fabric upper and a sole made of twisted cord).  These things represented success during their glory days but today are nowhere to be found except perhaps in some obscure museum that isn’t at all on the roadmap.

J.K. Rowling, author of the wildly successful Harry Potter books, said that ultimately we decide what have been failures in our lives. She went on to say that it is impossible to go through life without experiencing failure in one form or another. She was grateful for the failures that she had because they taught her to sift through the unimportant things in her life.

Failure oftentimes can be the greatest teacher of all and we need not be discouraged when we fail.

J.K. Rowling is no failure today. She probably will never be poor again but she realizes now that one’s curriculum vitae is not one’s life. Is it really about winning and losing?  Grantland Rice said,

“When the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, He marks not that you won or lost, but how you played the game.”

Want to know how we can help teach your team to play the game right?  Ask Dada about our values training programs.