It’s unlikely anything in this post will be revolutionary or different to what you have already read/know about failing but it helped me deal with a big old failure so enjoy reading my “self therapy session” or save yourself the time and get out of here!
For me, the main benefit of falling flat on your face publically and just flat out failing at achieving something that you have worked really hard on, is you learn a few things, you actually learn quite a bit.
First, it is a timely and useful reminder that the sun does in fact not shine out of your behind. I will be first to say I am likely over confident so I dread to think how overconfident, at worst arrogant I would be if I didn’t fail all the time. Luckily in my job and just because of who I am, I do fail regularly, a lot of the time, in front of people which is the worst type.
Second, it really genuinely makes you analyse, iterate and improve (another beautiful bunch of buzzwords). When one wins or succeeds at something it is counter intuitive or down right stupid to think you need to change something about the process, the delivery or anything to do with the endeavour you were partaking in. Failing forces this, it ensures you double back and go through where you think you fell down, it ensures you read the feedback email and act on it, it forces you to make the painful tell me how I screwed this up call and then actually listen to the person on the other end of the phone. All of which are integral to building a path to doing something useful in the world. I hate failing, but as every guru with half a brain will tell you, it really is the only way to improve, now that I am part of that illustrious group of deeply underqualified, over confident guru's let’s see how many times I fail at this before it becomes useful to someone!
Finally, failing all the time has meant I have a fairly thick skin, which is becoming quite useful.
Have a good week and remember it’s always better to be on the field failing than in the stands pointing at the person that failed.
Here’s a picture of some England fans who have watched our team fail more times than is healthy, weirdly England seem to have done something good here.