Failure is as much a part of life as success is, as anyone may tell you now. My experience as a child, however, was coddled by the fact that failure was not, could not, and should not be part of the equation growing up. What a disadvantage that mindset has put me at, but it’s not just me — it’s our whole generation’s mindset.
Much like the children we were, the majority of us were protected from the consequences, hardship, and lessons of failure. If you asked me as a little kid what my greatest fear was being a disappointment, or making a mistake so big I couldn’t fix it myself. How did this fear become something characteristic of the technology age?
The first and easiest cause of this is, of course, education — how you were taught. If you were lucky enough, you were raised in an environment where it was okay to fail.
Second — and I think most important — is your environment’s reaction to failures by its community. If your environment shames you, berates you, or got disappointed in you, then a natural reaction is to avoid making that same blunder. You get conditioned to not fail and it’s a surmounting pressure that increases as expectations are set higher and higher. I know this is a major problem for people today. All you have to do is look at the statistics and listen to the messaging people use to talk about themselves to know this is an issue. My main issue with the current thought processes of this generation about failure is that it’s not sustainable. If failure continues to be the worst possible outcome for the majority of people, then we will burn out and give up.
Convincing yourself that failure is not as scary as you make it out to be, requires that you actually let yourself fail. Not avoid failure, not give up or make excuses full on just fail. Failure must be preceded by another attempt where you actually learn from what failed at the first attempt. This is where a change of mindset is necessary from passing and failing to trial and error. If you take a skill or subject you want to learn as trial and error learning becomes much easier.
It takes learning into a form that many have not had the luxury of actually experiencing before because, from day one, it is not expected of you to have the answer or even know it. Posit a theory and then we can work through it, test it, see where it works and where the theory falls short or fails. Taking note of where the experiment failed can then modify a second attempt to make the theory hold up. That’s how learning should be — where an acceptable answer is “I don’t know, but *blank* seems likely.” This mindset promotes thought and steers away from the “search for the answer and memorizing the answer” education stylings of today.
The idea and the stigma behind failure must change for people to maintain the level of mental and physical health necessary for a higher quality of knowledge, understanding, and life. The fact of the matter is that failure is a part of life, but it should not warp your ideas about how you live your life. Failure should not keep you from enjoying things you never thought you’d get the opportunity to do. Failure should not keep you from getting a job, a house, or a family. Failure is not the end of the world and it shouldn’t cost you anything but time. If our attitude around failure changed, our attitude about motivation would change as well — from fear-based motivations to exploring-based motivations.