Failing is Winning

“Face the light. Don’t be afraid of the shadow it casts.” — Ted Dekker

Big, bold, and red, the letter “F” is circled at the top of your page. This simple, silent, singular letter communicates you are neither successful nor perfect. Your understanding is insufficient. Unconsciously, you inhale sharply. Your gut twists as you flip the page over so that no one can see you are a failure.

Red wounds across white pages may be your most vivid memory of failure. Or maybe it was red patches upon round cheeks as mocking laughter swirled through your small ears. Or perhaps you were first acquainted through paled skin and cold blood as angry faces confront even when your eyes are closed.

Failure has approached us all. We feel it nearby; a dark shadow trailing behind us. Maybe if we run faster, it can’t catch us. Maybe if we play it safe, it can’t reach us. Maybe if our kids live in a bubble, they’ll never know it exists. Ultimately, we realize, the only way to lose this shadow is to avoid the light.

We avoid trying new things:

We avoid learning a new hobby like art, we shrink back because “I know I’m not an artist.” If we keep these doors locked, failure can never sneak in.

We avoid hoping and dreaming. When we yearn for a family but have no suitors for marriage, we dismiss the dream because “it must not be meant for me.” If we never reach for more, we can protect ourselves from disappointment.

We avoid making any decision with an unknown outcome. When a job opportunity comes up but we doubt we’ll make the cut, we don’t apply because “they probably wouldn’t hire me anyways.” If we only step forward when every detail is certain, failure can never jump up and slap us back to reality.

There is one problem. A big, bold, ironic problem. We have now chosen to avoid the shadow of failure by living in the dark. This simple, silent, singular lie that we can live a life without failure will stunt any potential we have for growth and keep us sedated as we coast through life. But, at least we’re safe and comfortable. Right?

Why do we do this? What is it that makes us afraid of failure? Julien Smith calls this fear the flinch:

“[It] is the moment when every doubt you’ve ever had comes back and hits you, hard. It’s when your whole body feels tense. It’s an instinct that tells you to run…When coming across something they know will make them flinch, most people have been trained to refuse the challenge and turn back.”

This involuntary flinch is the moment all potential disaster flashes before your eyes. In this moment, you see the bloody “F” at the top of the page, feel the heat in your cheeks, laughter in your ears, and imagine the angry faces before you.

Turn back and save yourself!

In this fight or flight moment, flight claims to keep us safe from the potential of failure. And it often does; in the short term. In the long term, life becomes a cycle of defending ourselves from incoming threats. We are forever flinching away from life’s confrontations, our personal aspirations, and trying anything new. We never grow stronger because we never learn to fight. Instead, adrenaline flows as we continue to flee.

But what about when we choose to fight back? What about the times we fail and choose to keep trying? This is the theme in the movie Meet the Robinsons. The story follows Lewis, a young orphan who is excited to change the world one small invention at a time. The only problem? His inventions always fail. With grand explosions and personal humiliation. Maybe you can relate. Lewis begins to flinch, slowly accepting that he is nothing more than a failure. He begins to believe he should give up on his inventions.

Until the day when perseverance pays off and all his inventions start working out. Happily ever after, right?

Not exactly.

For Lewis, everything continues to go wrong. Lewis is at the dinner table with the Robinson family when his invention explodes again. Peanut butter and jelly splatter onto the faces of this loving family he wanted to impress. A dramatic beat allows us to share in Lewis’ horror. Then, the family screams, “You failed! And it was awesome!” One woman calls through the excitement, “From failing, you learn! From success, not so much.” They call a toast to celebrate Lewis’ failure. Lewis is shocked but delighted as they quote their family motto “Keep moving forward!”

What if we, like the Robinsons, could learn to celebrate our failures? Not because failure was the goal. But because through failing we learned. And learning is valuable. Learning is growing, growing is progress, and progress leads us to success.

But growing and progressing can be painful and scary.

This is something Ed Catmull learned while leading his team of innovative creators. Catmull is a co-founder of Pixar, former president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, and author of Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. At Pixar, Catmull and his co-founders recognized that failure was an inevitable obstacle in creativity. Their mission became: lead the team to identify, confront, and overcome every challenge.

Catmull chooses to see the creative process as a series of experiments. Scientists create experiments to test a theory. If the experiment succeeds, the theory is likely to be correct. If the experiment fails, the theory is incorrect. Either way, the experiment is worthwhile because the scientist learned. (Remember, “From failing, you learn!”) Catmull explains,

“Any outcome is a good outcome, because it yields new information. If your experiment proved your initial theory wrong, better to know it sooner rather than later. Armed with new facts, you can then reframe whatever question you’re asking.”

The leaders at Pixar shaped their company culture to accept the reality of inevitable failure and confront it effectively. This task required a lot of encouragement. Once establishing the inevitability of problems, Catmull says,

“We must work to uncover [problems] and assess our own role in them, even if doing so means making ourselves uncomfortable; when we then come across a problem, we must marshal all our energies to solve it.”

Failure is inevitable. Hiding from it keeps us from learning and growing. Confronting it is uncomfortable; it causes us to flinch. But when we see decisions in life as experiments that test what we have learned so far, any outcome is helpful — whether success or failure. Failure is an opportunity to react, adjust, and revise.

Many of us have been conditioned to fear and avoid failure. But we can be free from this fear. There is far less pressure and far more opportunity in store for those of us who embrace failure as a learning experience.

Julien Smith encourages us,

“Train yourself to flinch forward, and your world changes radically. You respond to challenges by pushing ahead instead of shrinking back. You become bigger instead of smaller; you’re more stable and more confident. Your world becomes a series of obstacles to overcome, instead of attacks you have to defend yourself from.”

We must step forward. Try something new. Hope, dream, and make decisions with the wisdom we have today. Acknowledge we will make mistakes, it will get messy, and we will be uncomfortable. But it’s always worthwhile to try and fail. We always learn, always grow. It is in this paradox we discover that failing is winning.