Why talk about failure?

I talk a lot about failure in this blog – about the emotions involved, about picking ourselves up, about focusing on the process, and about ensuring we learn from them. I thought I’d write about why I do this.

I find that there aren’t enough blog posts about normal life on the internet. You have tons of blog posts around how to sell better, market better, build a better company, and so on. You have many praising successful people/reflecting on why people were successes. And the ones that have real life applicability are those that talk about the “7 ways to be happy” or the “30 things you need to do stay productive.” I read/skim through all these sorts of posts but I don’t think they do the topic of failure justice.

When we play an opponent who is 7% better than us, experiments have concluded that we only win 30% of the time. However, we feel great about winning since winning has that challenge. If we seek learning and growth in our times, the circumstances (our main opponent) is regularly 7-10% better than we are. This means a failure rate of 70-80%. That’s normal life – you fail a lot and win sometimes. The win feels great and, more often than not, the previous failures don’t matter as much because it only takes one good thing to work out. That one break can change everything.

So, we spend 70-80% of our lives facing challenges and failures. And, yet, we don’t talk about it. Instead, we find our resolve to fight further dampened when we compare the highlight reels of our friends on Facebook to our dirty “behind-the-scenes” video.

That’s why I talk a lot about failure. In a way, it tells me everything is normal in the world. I hope it tells you that too because we all have our troubles and challenges. We all are defined by the choices we make. And, if you are going through a tough time now, life has repeatedly demonstrated to me that a good process, a good heart, and hard work make it through in the end.

We do. We fail. We learn. We love. We laugh. We live. I guess that’s really what this blog is about.