Failure is not Fatal; It Just Is

"I missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed".

   - Michael Jordan

Let’s talk a bit more about ‘failing’. I’m going to dip into my own materials a bit and quote from The Hamlet Secret: a self directed (Shakespearean) workbook for living a passionate, joy-filled life, and the chapter that starts with the quote “There is nothing, either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”.

Failing to some is bad, but that’s because thinking makes it so. Failing is an answer on its own, and as such, is a good thing in my book. ‘Hunh, James, you like to fail?’

Now I never said I like failing, it’s just that I prefer it to not knowing or indecision. As a sales coach I drove my army to get a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ and that a ‘maybe’ would count as a ‘no’. It helped us ‘keep it real’ and by that I mean none of us lived in false hope or talked about things that might happen if . . .

Now I’ll admit that based on how most people live that my model seems a bit harsh, but it’s actually a very attractive place to be, once you’ve gotten used to it. You see most sales people react to sales quotas and their managers by talking about conversations, possibilities, leads and ‘pipeline’. It leads to a bit of self delusion and a coach’s job is to get things rooted in reality.

I would ask teams what they would do by the next week’s meeting and then, a week later, ask ‘did you do it’. In these meetings, the only acceptable answer to ‘did you do what you said you’d do’ were ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Once someone on the team started explaining or telling me the story about what happened and ‘how I really tried hard but it was impossible to . . . ‘ I would cut them off (see Everything That Follows The Word 'Because' Is A Lie). It was hard for them to get their heads around this attitude at first but once they got it, that I wasn’t upset, I was just trying to get them to see the real facts, see what was in the ‘gap’ and what was getting in their way, things moved quickly.

Some even got to the point where they were flying in their personal authority and could ‘celebrate their victories and their defeats' Hamlet Secret, p. 201) and they became our superstars. They were a pleasure to work with and a breeze to manage because we ‘cut to the chase’ and always knew where we stood.

It was ok to ‘fail’ in this case because only they could we stop and get a look at what went into the failure and remedy that. If we spent time making excuses, adding blame, looking for a ‘way out’ of total and absolute responsibility (see The Land of 100 Responsibility, Hamlet Secret p. 45), then we just delay the part where we regroup, make a plan and get into action.

If you are up to something and don’t have a ‘rocks are hard, water is wet’ view of reality it could take you longer to get your results, that’s all. You’re not sunk or tethered, you’re just anchored to something in the line of feelings and ‘good/bad’ and the facts don’t really care about those things.

Let’s put it this way: Try paying for lunch with a story of how you left your wallet on the desk at the office . . .

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts". Sir Winston Churchill

Written by James M. Lynch | 09 July 2010. James M. Lynch is a personal and executive coach, has created trainings for Fortune 100 companies like Miller and Philip Morris, was national Executive Director for Humanus Institute Leadership and Transformational Training Courses, Chief Training Officer in charge of training and cultural development for a national industry leader, formed award winning corporate giving and action intiatives, works as an entrepreneurial coach, seminar leader and has written two books on personal development plus numerous articles on self help and personal development for several sources including a weekly series on the Living Section of The Huffington Post. With a background in the arts he has also been a director and acting coach, producer, writer, manager and helped create several theatre companies and events. As an artist he paints, sculpts, produces arts events and is active in his local community as the Vice Chair of the Cultural Arts Commission.