Perhaps there is no better representation of failure than when a project you’ve worked on explodes spectacularly in front of an audience of thousands. When SpaceX CEO Elon Musk does it – as his company arguably did towards the end of his life Starship prototype will be launched on Wednesday– the agony of failure is made palpable in towers of flames and clouds of burning shrapnel that flow live all over the world.
Musk is a billionaire industrialist and brash public figure famed for roaring success in multiple industries. And yet, he still often fails, occasionally even seeing his ambitions to build rockets that will transport humans to Mars literally go up in flames.
He’s not the only successful tycoon or icon to wallow in the pits of failure from time to time. Thomas Edison is known for his recognition its close relationship with failureFor years, JD Salinger’s literary genius was ignored because his short stories were constantly rejected by the New Yorker; Michael Jordan didn’t make it to his high school varsity basketball team on his first try.
We don’t always have to divert signals from the efforts of wealthy tycoons – especially those with reputations as checked as Musk’s– whether from visionary inventors or legendary athletes. There is a lesson to be learned from the stumbling blocks that overcome both the immensely successful and the anonymous. Failure haunts us all no matter how many victories we enjoy in the course of our lives. But failure can be educational. There are often significant lessons, if not glimpses of success, in our failures – remember the fact that before it exploded, that SpaceX rocket did something unprecedented– but seeing that fact means rethinking the very concept of what it means to fail.
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Failure is a constant, so don’t dwell on it
Well-known clichés about failure abound, regardless of context, but especially in the work. The idea of ”early and frequent failure” exists to encourage younger workers who are struggling to gain a foothold in their jobs. “Embracing failure” easily applies to entrepreneurs, gambling in their early efforts to build something with lasting power. The suggestion is that your embrace of failure should be a temporary stepping stone to an idealized idea of lasting success.
But in life, things are rarely cut and dried like this. According to Ross McCammon, the author of the corporate etiquette guide Works well with others, success is associated with failure more often than you might expect. However, as he puts it, this is actually a good thing – if failure can be interpreted as an action-oriented dilemma.
“Failure is not a dead thing,” he tells Lifehacker. “It is a living being and you can get energy from it. But the longer you wait to think about it, the more calcified it becomes. And then it is just a major death that has happened, rather than an essential part of your present and future. ”
A mindful approach is key to recognizing how missteps can help you in the short and long term. McCammon emphasizes a more proactive approach, where you recognize failures as they come and discuss them honestly with colleagues and bosses.
He says:
Recognizing success within failure is best done immediately after recognizing what is happening as failure. Or maybe even during. I think early failure and failure often works as a philosophy as long as you also review early and review often and make your reviews known to your colleagues and even your boss.
Not everyone has the luxury of such accommodating workplaces and sympathetic, understanding bosses and colleagues. But you can avoid the black cloud of failure in your own mind by broadening your perspective on what it means to fail.
Accept that your career will not be linear
“I’ve been fired from almost every job I’ve had because of budgets or downsizing,” said Sean Abrams, an editor at the Ask Men website. As a 29-year-old Millennial writer, Abrams is no stranger to the turmoil in the digital media industry, not to mention the flow that has permeated the wider job market since the Great Recession of 2008. For those in his position, failure is often born from circumstances beyond their control – recognizing this can provide a valuable perspective.
“Sometimes the factors that led to your failure don’t really have much to do with you at all. You just got the short end of the stick, ”says Abrams.
To label a failed venture as a failure is too restrictive to be of much educational value. McCammon suggests that we “reject the idea of stages like failure and success and play a longer game,” in which we accept that the arches of our career will be anything but predictable.
He tells Lifehacker:
As we move through our career, we see it primarily as a kind of line and a line that should always go up. Of course that is not what is happening. It doesn’t always go up and sometimes it goes sideways and overflows on itself. Maybe you tried out a new career for a few years, maybe you were unemployed for a while. Careers are not linear. And I think that’s a useful context to judge failure.
One way to rephrase failure, especially in a culture that so outrageously blames success, is to think about it in less serious terms. Rather than dwelling on the drastic consequences of an alleged failure, consider setbacks as instructive mistakes instead. Errors are normal and excusable and occur regularly. People who make mistakes aren’t usually defined by them – and McCammon thinks you should unashamedly own yours:
“What any successful person – young or old – is good at is making mistakes without excuses … you could say that a career is just a series of mistakes you go through that turns you into successes.”
With that frame of mind, finding success within your supposed failures isn’t going to be difficult at all.