Most of us are aware of that friend or coworker who is constantly pulling us down. Who seems to have a gift for yucking our yum when it comes to our successes. You’ll often hear it described as “crab mentality”, meaning “if I can’t have it, then neither can you”. In short, these people pull us down when we are rising. But I think it’s just as dangerous to surround ourselves with people who don’t allow us to fail. I don’t have a catchy name for this, but the conversation usually goes something like this:
“Hey, did you run that half marathon last weekend”
“No, I had to pull out at 18kms because my knee exploded. I’m pretty disappointed.”
”Don’t be disappointed! You RAN 18kms! That’s amazing! I’m so proud of you! I could NEVER do that!”
“yeah…I guess…”
Sound familiar? Chances are you’ve been on both sides of this conversation. Both as someone who tried and failed, and someone who is trying to comfort them. But are you actually comforting them? Are you actually helping them get closer to their long term goal?
Don’t get me wrong, I think we all comfort with the best of intentions. But, I think we fail to acknowledge that failures are often our greatest teachers. If we tell someone they didn’t fail, we rob them of the potential teachings they can gain from the attempt.
As an example, two years ago I tried to complete a 100-mile trail running race. And, sadly, after about 74kms I pulled out of the race from dehydration. I went and got an IV, threw up a bit and licked my wounds. Somewhere out there is a video of me retching on the course…it’s not pretty.
So many people after the run told me I didn’t fail. They said “You still did 74 kilometers, that’s pretty awesome!”.
And it is.
But it wasn’t my GOAL. My goal was one hundred and sixty one kilometres. Which I didn’t accomplish. Therefore I failed to reach my goal.
However, I have one friend who asked me “so what are you going to change next time?”. Now that’s a great question. He knew first hand how hard those 74 kilometres are, because he was on the course with me. It would be easy for him to simply say “well, you really tried man…you should be proud!”. Instead, he held space for me to process the failure, and come up with strategies for future successes. For me, this was far more valuable then another pat on the back.
I was running the same segment of the course this last weekend in preparation for this years attempt at the 100 mile course. As I was running, I was keenly aware of how I’ve changed my training this season, my nutrition, and my race strategy. I can’t guarantee it will work any better this year, but I do know that without the first failure I would not be nearly as ready this year as I am. And that new knowledge didn’t come from people patting me on the back. It came from acknowledgement of past failure (and what a spectacular failure it was!) and that is what spurred a change in my behaviour for this season.
Don’t be scared to fail. Be excited. If you tried your best and failed, don’t let others take that gift from you. Hold your head up high and say “I failed.”. Be proud of it. Then use it to gain knowledge moving forward.