Remember To Dream, Vol. 12
"I’ve been very lucky. All I wanted was to pay the rent. Then these characters took off... Money's okay, but what I really like is working." - Stan Lee
Failing to Succeed
According to Merriam-Webster, the dictionary definition of failure is “lack of success.”
Success, in turn, is defined as “the act of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame” or “the correct or desired result of an attempt.”
Both definitions are incomplete at best.
To start with, how can any self-respecting description of success not mention happiness or love?
Surely, a life filled with all the wealth, respect, and fame in the world is meaningless if you aren’t happy or don’t have love in your life.
If you were to ask a lottery winner, they would tell you that wealth can ruin your life.
If you were to ask a celebrity, they might say that fame can make you miserable.
As for respect, is it obtained or achieved, or does it actually come from within? Earning respect starts with respecting yourself. Success from this perspective is innate, not extrinsic.
And, if you learn more from your mistakes - attempts that don’t produce the desired result - than from those that do, then what is success actually worth?
Evidently the success that is so superficially described in the dictionary is not meaningful. And since the definition of failure is predicated on success, it raises the question as to whether such a concept even exists.
What is failure after all? Why do we assume it to be a negative thing?
No Success Without Failure
The word failure carries so much weight that most of us don’t even take the time to explore what it means. We’ve been programmed to view it as a source of shame and something to be avoided at all costs.
But when you ask high-achievers - people that have accomplished great feats in life - their view on failure is universal. It is an essential and welcome stepping stone to success.
Just ask Michael Jordan: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Or Thomas Edison: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Or Napoleon Bonaparte: “He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.”
In reality, you cannot succeed without failure. Failure is an integral part of the journey. It is our greatest teacher. And it makes success taste ever so sweeter.
A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Yet, fear of failure is so widespread that it has a medical name - Atychiphobia - and a host of physical symptoms, including difficulty breathing, dizziness, chest pain, and digestive distress. It is the most common phobia in the United States. One third of Americans cite their fear of failure as deterring them from starting their own business.
Besides preventing people from following their dreams, fear of failure has negative implications for an array of outcomes, including task choice, effort expenditure, persistence, performance attainment, intrinsic motivation, and well-being.
According to Jim Taylor, a specialist in parenting psychology, fear of failure is the most pervasive and debilitating issue among children today. Further, children experiencing fear of failure tend to be less motivated and have a poor attitude towards learning.
The real problem with fear of failure is that it discourages us from taking risks. It encourages us to stay inside our comfort zones. For children, this is especially harmful, as risk is a vital ingredient in their growth. We cannot reach our full potential in life without taking risks.
The irony is that by fearing failure, we increase the chances that we do not achieve the positive outcomes we seek.
It’s All In Our Conditioning
The saddest part about fear of failure is that it is often out of our control. It is intergenerational, passed down from parents to children.
Most of the time, parents don’t even realize that they are instilling fear of failure in their children, because they have been conditioned to fear failure themselves. It is an automatic, unconscious process.
In a study conducted by Elliot and Thrash, two researchers from the University of Rochester, fear of failure is found to be transmitted through the use of love withdrawal by parents. It typically emerges from messages that children’s parents convey that being loved depends on their being successful or that their parents’ love will be withdrawn if they fail.
Parents’ fear of failure leads them to display patterns of behavior that teach their children that mistakes and failure are to be avoided at all costs.
In effect, parents project their own fear of failure onto their children by taking their children’s outcomes personally. They experience the same feelings of shame as they would have if it were their own failures.
When a parent responds to a child’s failure by withdrawing love, it teaches the child that failure is shameful because it communicates that, when the child fails, he or she is no longer worthy of love and affection.
Mistakes and failure are an inevitable part of the exploration and maturation process. Children whose parents fear failure are likely to encounter love withdrawal early and often and to gradually develop a “dispositional capacity to experience shame upon failure.”
Without realizing it, we are bringing up generations of children who fear failure and who are programmed to pass on this fear to their own children. It is a vicious cycle that can only be stopped through a transformation in our attitudes towards failure.
Learning Eliminates Failure
It all starts with greater focus on effort rather than outcome. Compliment children for trying hard and displaying determination. Encourage them to prioritize the journey towards a goal, not the goal itself. Identify and reward constructive behaviors, like learning and persistence.
A study published in the British Journal of Educational Psychology concluded that two points are necessary for children’s optimal learning. First, teachers and parents have to be more sensitive on how they evaluate young children's competence. Very high standards and criticism result in increased levels of fear of failure.
Second, teachers and parents have to be more sensitive to the rationale they provide to children to adopt a goal or engage in an activity. Suggesting children improve their skills for their own enjoyment and development is much more beneficial than suggesting they improve their skills in order to get good grades.
Another framework that transforms the way we think about failure is the idea of adopting a growth mindset, whereby we view failure as an opportunity to learn. Carol Dweck, an expert on mindset and performance, asserts that failure only has a destructive effect on people who don’t believe they can learn from their mistakes.
In other words, when you emphasize learning over outcomes, the notion of failure disappears.
Fail Fast, Fail Often
No matter what you do in life, you will benefit from embracing failure.
Entrepreneurs learn best by doing. They fail, learn, refine, and repeat this process until they have product-market fit.
Writers produce a first draft that is usually unrecognizable from the final version, and only arrive there through repeated rounds of edits.
Scientists test, learn, refine, and repeat this process until they produce a successful experiment.
In almost every walk of life, it is impossible to succeed without failing first. The biggest success stories the world has ever seen are also its biggest failures. They are the men and women who embraced failure on their road to success.
Viewed through this lens then, the real definition of failure is not a lack of success, but a lack of failure. A lack of willingness to take risks and step outside our comfort zone. A lack of courage to try new things and challenge ourselves.
Anyone that hasn’t experienced failure hasn’t truly lived. And no amount of wealth, respect, or fame can make up for that.
In other words, success is an outcome of failure. It cannot exist without it. Or, as Confucius once said: “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.”
It might be time for Merriam-Webster to update their definitions of success and failure, and for parents to do the same. So that future generations can adopt a new attitude towards failure. One that prioritizes it over success. One in which we put ourselves in more positions to fail, because we understand that this is how we will succeed.
Fear is the only thing standing in our way. It is the only thing we truly have to fear.
Profiles In Dreaming
Every week, I profile someone that has fulfilled their dream against the odds and highlight three lessons from their journey.
The Man With A Marvelous Imagination
From the comic books to the movies and merchandise, it is hard to avoid Marvel. But, that was not always the case. At one time, comics were dying as an art form. Enter Stan Lee. He changed the way we view comics and created a collection of superheroes that are still revered today. He also brought them to the silver screen. By the time he died in 2018, the Marvel film franchise was the highest grossing in the world.
Ponder This
“If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don't let some idiot talk you out of it.”
- Stan Lee, from his keynote at the 2017 UCLA Extension certificate graduation ceremony.
Practice This
Developed by Chris and Janet Attwood, The Passion Test is a simple, yet elegant, process for identifying what you care about in life.
Start by filling in the blank 15 times for the following statement: “When my life is ideal, I am ___.” The word(s) you choose to fill in the blank must be a verb. For example: “When my life is ideal, I am helping children.”
Once you’ve created 15 statements, identify the top 5 choices. To do this, compare statements #1 and #2 to identify which is most important. Take the winner of that comparison and decide whether it’s more or less important than statement #3. Compare the winning statement with the remaining statements until you’ve identified the passion that is most meaningful to you.
Repeat this process until you identify the next 4 strongest passions in life.
Finally, create markers for each of your top 5 passions. These are indicators that you are living that passion. For example, if you are passionate about helping children, it could be teaching a class full of children every week.
Play This
Every week, I share some of the music I listen to when I write. Studies have shown that playing a song or short playlist on repeat helps put you into a state of flow, which is optimal for creativity. The choice of music is up to you. I choose music that reflects the energy I want to infuse in my work. Most of the time, this means dreamy, melodic deep house. But sometimes, when I’m writing about something raw, I go with old school hip hop.
Here’s a link to a master playlist of all the songs I’ve shared so far.
I’d love to hear your feedback or connect with you. Email me at omar@omarfarha.com.