I recently reviewed one of my favorite John Maxwell books, Failing Forward. In it the legendary leadership expert observes that “The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.”
I fell in love with this book years ago because it taught me the value of failure. Now, on the other side of many more failures, including some in my voice over work, I’m finally beginning to appreciate it, and I’m wondering a thousand things….like what would happen if we thought of failure differently, processing and moving through it with the mindset that, without it, we would be disqualified from success and incapable of it?
What would we attempt if we were socialized to embrace failure as a necessary and invaluable milestone?
What kind of people would we be if we didn’t work so hard to escape failure?
And what is the cost of our fear of failure??
In what ways are we shrinking the intended depth of our lives because we are more responsive to our fear of failure than to the voice of our purpose and destiny calling us to advance?
THE REAL VALUE OF FAILURE
I think a great deal would improve in culture as a whole if we would value failure instead of fearing it.
First, our children would be empowered to discover and treasure their unique giftings. Although they wouldn’t be empowered to quit during times of stress or hardship, they also wouldn’t feel demeaned or marginalized. And they would always have at least a parent or an enlightened educator reassuring them much like Kinko’s founder Paul Orfalea’s mother did when she told him “the A students work for the B students. The C students run the businesses. And the D students dedicate the buildings.” Overcoming Dyslexia, Fortune Magazine, May 13, 2002
Could you imagine how much fun learning would be if kids were required to have a certain number of earnest, failed attempts. This would to develop their creative and critical thinking while also breaking the back of the fear that would hobble them in their adult lives? Some are grasping the concept, and are urging us to teach our young that “failure is a great thing.”
What if the reason we don’t succeed is because we don’t pursue failure enough? Failure is a numbers game after all. Thomas Edison is famously quoted as having said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.” We love this quote. But it doesn’t feel so great when we’re in that low place.
FAILURE AND THE VOICE OVER ARTIST
Nobody likes to audition endlessly without success. But through consistent auditioning, we develop creativity, stamina, (hopefully) our talent. Perhaps most importantly, we develop a thicker skin because eventually we don’t take the rejection so personally (or ourselves so seriously).
The painful part of this journey is that we have to keep auditioning to get where we say we want to go. There are no short-cuts. Although I truly enjoy auditioning most of the time, I have to admit I’m not always a fan of this sacred Process.
I sometimes have to be reminded of the baseball greats whose place in the record books was only secured because they swung at, and missed, countless balls. Like most, I hate to be reminded that it was those countless misses that got them into the record books.
There’s no doubt they had worked hard on their craft to improve themselves every day. Having done that though, they were undaunted by the concept of failing over and over again. They didn’t allow the voices of insecurity and failure to define them. They stayed focused, humble yet confident in their own giftings and discipline.
MY STORY – THE SPOILS OF FAILURE
Challenges with Reading……
I struggled to succeed early and had a miserable time academically as a child. To say that I struggled learning how to read is very much an understatement. I could see the words I was reading on the page. I could read them to myself only very slowly. But when it came time to read them aloud, getting them out of my mouth was almost physically painful. Back then, I was in school in England, where reading aloud (and with feeling) was something all students were required to do.
Having to read aloud in class somehow caused everything within me to freeze up. I would stand, silent and terrified, staring at the words on the page, but unable to actually say them. The fear and nervousness were so debilitating I would sometimes recite words I wasn’t even seeing.
Of course, because reading to myself was a hardship as well, standardized tests were an added misery. The primitive tests that were supposed to reveal dyslexia were unhelpful. So my school sent me home to struggle with the help of my tireless parents, who even signed me up for a reading contest where I placed second or third. (Perhaps not surprisingly, I have no recollection of the reading contest.) I have taken more speed-reading crash courses than I care to remember. But, to this day, when left to read on my own time, I read slowly and even repetitively.
…….just About Anything
It would be decades before I realized that the trouble I’d had sight-reading piano music as a child and college student was exactly the same as the trouble I’d suffered reading words. My Guyanese teacher would bellow in my ear, frustrated that I wasn’t moving to the beat of a metronome or her tapping finger. This made me feel even smaller.
There was nothing I could do to actually play the music I was reading. Music theory was never a challenge. Playing piano fairly well was never a challenge either… as long as I didn’t have to read the music, that is. Although I became advanced in skill over the many years I played, I never improved in this struggle to sight-read. Every semester in college, I had to practice for hours each day until my hands began to remember where to go on the keys.
This process literally took most of the semester. During that time, my bewildered, but very kind piano teacher would quietly ask me if I was practicing. Week after week I sounded terrible. This would continue until one day my brain somehow no longer had to work so hard because my hands would begin to remember which notes to play.
Suddenly my vision and my brain could relax, and I only needed to look at the sheet music to get a general reminder of where I was in the piece I was playing.
Only then would all the hours of practice suddenly begin to shine through. I could easily feel the music and allow the emotion of it to flow out of me. From that moment until the end of the semester, practice would be a breeze.
There was nothing that could make the process easier. I simply had to slog it out, sounding like I had never touched a piano before until, one day, I would miraculously sound like a pianist.
The Light on the Other Side
Did I feel like a failure as a child and young person struggling with her reading? Absolutely.
Did I feel like a failure when another student who had overheard me practicing piano one day commented on how terrible I sounded? Most definitely.
But now, on the other side of those years, failure adds value to my life in at least two precious ways.
For one, there is this thing of tenacity. I don’t believe tenacity can be developed without repeated, sometimes crushing failure that causes us to regroup, but that never lets us quit, even though we might seriously consider it.
I’ve been told I would have been one of the last men standing at the Alamo in 1836. Perhaps I can attribute that trait to my childhood.
The second fruit of my failure is that, while I have much to learn in my voice over journey, my ability to inflect, enunciate, and portray emotion as a voice over artist is due entirely to the countless hours spent reading aloud as a child. There is no doubt that I would have quit had I been left to my own devices. But my parents saw something different for me and would never allow me to do that.
I can’t say it’s not hard to compare myself to others to this day. But I’m learning that this tendency only slows me down and undermines my hard work.
GRATEFUL FOR FAILURE
There are many negative things in life that we shouldn’t accommodate, but do. For example, we make room for fear, nourishing it with time and excuses when we should evict it.
In Failing Forward, John Maxwell teaches us that failure can and should become our friend (dare I say roommate). He encourages us to see it as a lesson and a stepping-stone. Although in the hard moments, I still feel the sting of failure, looking back, I can see that I would never have made it this far without it.
