Learning how to use failure to your advantage
For a moment, think of a time that you’ve failed. No matter the context. A time that you’ve failed yourself, or a time that you’ve failed someone you love. A time that you’ve let someone down, or a time that you’ve completely crashed and burned.
Did this life event ruin you? Did it alter your being beyond repair?
Chances are, if you’re reading this, the answer is no.
As I’ve now mentioned many times, failure is inevitable. It’s something that we all will experience within our lifetimes. Albeit to varying degrees, it’s something we can’t outrun.
More than it being something that we cannot outrun, it, in many ways, is more beneficial than treacherous if utilized properly.
Don’t Feel Sorry For Yourself
All too often, (myself included) when we fail, our immediate instinct is to feel sorry for ourselves, drag our feet and move in an entirely different direction. I’d hate to know the number of human being’s who’ve missed out on their calling, on what they were destined to become, due to immediate failure.
We are so quick to call it quits. And why?
Because it’s the easy thing to do.
Luckily, stories exist of those who persevere and overcome failure. Moreover, those who use failure as the gift that it is.
JK Rowling. Heard of her? If not, surely you’re familiar with the fictional character whom she brought to life – Harry Potter.
Rowling is one of the best known and most accomplished authors of the past century. Now totaling well over 500 million copies sold, and a net-worth of roughly $1 Billion. Most renowned for the 7-book and 8-movie Harry Potter series which now has its own theme-park attraction at Universal Studios, Orlando. All of this, despite Rowling’s initial struggles as a writer.
A quote from Rowling in reference to the early stages of her career goes as such: “By every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.”
As a young hopeful author in Edinburgh, Scotland, recently divorced, broke and depressed – with a young daughter whom she was struggling to provide for, JK Rowling began attempts at publishing Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone, the first of the Harry Potter series – circa 1994-ish. One publisher turned down the manuscript, and so did the next. Shortly thereafter, another company sent her home empty handed – on and on this went, until twelve publishing companies had turned down what has now become the most acclaimed children’s book of all time.
It takes a great level of determination to pick yourself up after being turned away the very first time – never mind the twelfth time – and continue on pursuing the very same thing.
But, continue on, she did. And thankfully so. I, for one, do not much care to imagine a world in which the Harry Potter series never came to fruition.
Back to the drawing board she went, taking into account the reasons for failure to receive publishing acceptance from companies 1-12, making adjustments as necessary to her product. Lessons learned from these failures shone light on what changes needed to be made. It’s through these lessons that JK Rowling developed the foresight necessary to craft such an epic novel series.
What exactly does JK Rowling’s story mean with regards to failure? In some ways, it shares with us nothing about failure itself. Rather, it demonstrates the beauty available beyond failure. After all, if she’d thrown in the towel after being turned down by the very first publisher, there would be no Harry Potter, at least not in the way we know it now.
It would have been so easy for her to feel sorry for herself, but she didn’t. And neither should you.
It May Take Time
Lessons learned from failure oftentimes present themselves much further down the road in your life. As an example: experiencing failure in adolescence may not present its benefits until you’re settled into adulthood.
This is certainly the case in my own life. Let us reference my college experience – in all its glory:
Two semesters into my tenure at Iowa State University, I found myself on academic probation. With a 1.6 GPA – to say things weren’t looking good would be a drastic understatement. At this moment in time, as I’d cycled through two major choices, failed some classes, and made little-to-no progress toward the credits necessary to graduate – I was down and out. Many of the negative thoughts that had once spent time at the forefront of my mind had resurfaced – “maybe I’m not cut out for this” and “I don’t think I’m intelligent enough to be here.”
In the summer following my freshman year of college, I faced what was sure to be my “turnaround point” – my opportunity to right the ship, so to speak. I was re-taking the two classes that I had so miserably failed. And, at summer’s end, I had passed the courses – with a ‘D’ in each of them. Raising my GPA to an astounding 1.9.
If rock bottom was a tangible place, I’m quite sure that I found my way to it in this period of life.
“One more semester,” I distinctly remember muttering to myself. One more semester to make a change. To allow the opportunity to crawl out of the hole I’d so graciously dug and plopped myself into.
As one of the greatest minds to ever live, Albert Einstein, once quoted; “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Just as JK Rowling would not have been able to publish her book through the first publishing company, no matter the number of attempts – I would never reach the ultimate level of success I’d set out for without change. And so, I made a change. I made the decision to walk away from something I’d known as a part of me for nearly all of my lifetime – the sport of wrestling.
Standing at a crossroads in my life once again, with an identity crisis like I’d never experienced. Feeling, as JK Rowling stated in reference to her young career; like the biggest failure I knew.
At this moment, I had two options:
- Give up
- Move on
You Owe It To Yourself
Clearly, I chose the latter. A choice that set in motion a great deal of long days and many sleepless nights, numerous side jobs and an entirely revamped set of priorities. A choice that led me down the eventual path to where I stand today. To my wife and a now growing family, to my career, to the people I consider great friends to this day – to a life that I am proud of.
A bachelor’s degree, a great job, a beautiful home, a healthy mind and body – to name a few of the eventual successes rewarded to me through surmounting such perceived failures just a few years back.
Though I’m now proud of my life, for its beauty and its despair all the same – It took time before I was able to see it as such from this lens. To acknowledge that my early failures provided more benefit than negativity was not an easy pill to swallow. It’s only human nature to remain bitter toward life events that didn’t go our way.
I was that bitter person, for a good deal of time. Until I wasn’t.
As with JK Rowling’s life story, my own doesn’t (necessarily) provide us with any ground-breaking factoids on failure itself, but – once again – the beauty that lay beyond it. All that we can take away from failure, and apply it to life thereafter. Lessons in perseverance, acceptance, gratitude, clarity, and solitude. Lessons in what we are capable of as a human species, and – perhaps most importantly – a reminder of our mortality, that we are only human.
Ultimately, what I now understand is that I wouldn’t be who I am if not for failure and what I’ve learned through the process of climbing the “dark side of the mountain,” figuratively speaking.
To restate an opening claim; failure is something that can’t be outrun. Failure is, and forever will be, what you choose to make of it. In many ways, (to be cliche) it will make you, or it will break you.
If you’re in a dark place, a time of failure – look yourself in the mirror and make the cognitive choice to extract the good, and delete the bad. Find the ammunition for success through times of turmoil. As the age old saying goes: fail forward.
You owe this to yourself. And the choice is yours.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read. If you enjoy my writing, you can subscribe to receive email updates using the form below!
Forged in Fire 
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