Failure is a prerequisite in the world of Greats

Greatness is granular, perfection is superficial

Becoming great and not perfect at a craft must be the goal

Failure is something we all deal with every day- but it’s hard to tell, looking at our shiny world of success. Yet the point is that failure is something that is inevitable. My recent research work with my clients confirms that 90% of people of the world population fears failure. But I claim to contradict this. I think failure is not the only thing that holds us back. It is the fear of success too.

If I take my own example, when I moved out of my job to become an entrepreneur, I think it was the fear of success that was holding me back to take that leap than the fear of failure. It was the feeling of being successful that was blurring my vision. I mean I would really spend hours on questions like.

What if my products and services actually take off? What if clients find them good and recommend them? I mean what if my articles are read by people and it becomes viral? What if people start talking about my work and share it with common friends? What if I stopped making time for my family and get fully involved in my fulfilling my dreams? What happens if I really succeed in life on my own terms?

The fear of success became scarier than the fear of failure. I wasn’t sure how to deal with it so I chose to bungee jump in the dark.

I realized that the only way to beat my fear of success was by experimenting with my failures. The motive was to find out the ingredients of failures in order to face success. I chose to turn my life into a laboratory and run experiments on these two hypotheses. At first, I started doing things randomly and reluctantly to avoid failures, but this perspective was hindering the creative process of bringing the imagined outcome into reality. I shifted my perspective from avoiding failures to learning from failures. I started seeing failures as a series of data and links and they turned out to be nothing but negative results for my versions of the experiments. It helped me learn how to develop plan B or think inversely. I started to learn more about how not to do things that give negative results instead of seeking positive results. This technique was eye-opening to me. Because negative results, rejections, and failures became the pre-requisite conditions in my experiment with success.

Experiments are high stakes and time-consuming but they are necessary for life. Failures can be seen more as feedback than setbacks in these experiments. If we treat ourselves as modern-day scientists and innovators we will find the joy of success in every failure, because every failure is evidence to create a new belief and new experiment. The failed experiments are only theories that confirm the ways of not doing something. It doesn’t mean that the outcome was unsuccessful.

I have realized that failure is the price of greatness and greatness is about doing the required work with granularity. People will judge, criticize, and laugh at you. But one must keep creating a craft that is better than spending life on non-essentials.