How Do We Deal With Failure?

Failure is part of all of our lives. None of us is perfect (sorry if that comes as a shock to you). We all, in spite of the aura of competence we project, fail at things constantly. From the major things like failed relationships and doomed projects to the smaller stuff. The failure to resist that block of chocolate. The failure to concentrate on writing a blog post and not get distracted by YouTube (yes, guilty, many times). Our lives are a constant string of failures, big and small. 

We tend to talk a good game where it comes to failure - we talk about learning and experience and the idea of failing fast to learn fast, but often, the game we talk, and the game we really play are quite different.  Although our intentions around failure are often good, we often fail to live up to those good intentions (another failure to add to the list). Even when we think we are responding well to failure, our actual response is often quite negative. 

Our most common negative responses are the obvious ones - denial, blame and justification. We deny that the failure was actually a failure or justify our role in that failure- "it sort of worked", "it wasn't a failure, just a lapse in concentration", "it was an accident...nothing could be done". Denial and justification are comforting responses because they absolve us of responsibility. It's not our fault. We did our best. That's nice and comforting but denial and justification also rob us of our opportunity to respond positively and grow.

Blame is even worse - "it wasn't my fault, finance would't play ball", "they started it".  Again we shift the responsibility away from us but unlike denial where we shift the responsibility onto the universe at large, in blame we place the blame on some one else. So no only does blame not allow us our own positive response, it can actively poison relationships.

We can even trick ourselves into thinking that denial, justification and blame are positive, learning from failure type responses. We tell ourselves that we have learned - "I'll be more careful", "I won't trust accounts ever again", "I'll get it in writing next time". These sound like learning but are really just more denial, justification and blame. 

Even when we do learn from failure, we do so in a very negative way. We beat ourselves up. We admonish ourselves. We come up with long lists of things we should and should not do in the future to prevent this from happening again. While this is learning from failure, the way we are approaching the learning is very negative. Metaphorically whipping ourselves and loading ourselves with do's and don'ts is a very negative way to learn. And it's most often not effective. We become so burdened by these lists that things get overlooked or in the heat of the moment, we forget them all anyway and just jump straight back in. And then when failure inevitably happens again, we beat ourselves up even harder because we should have been prepared this time.

So what does a positive response to failure look like? 

To me, a positive response starts with acknowledgement. We must acknowledge that a failure has occurred and that we were a part of it. The way we acknowledge is important. We should not attribute blame to anyone or anything. Not others, not ourselves, not the universe at large. We simply acknowledge that something has happened that we need to deal with.

The second step in a positive response is to look at the situation and see whether there is anything those involved need to to to do to make the immediate situation better. Do you need to apologise to someone (or to yourself, if it is yourself that you have let down)? Are there recovery actions you need to take? Are there relationships you need to mend? Or create? Again, all without casting blame. 

The last step is to look at what happened and ask, not "what can we do to prevent this in future", but "what can we do so that if this happens again, it doesn't cause the same problems". Trying to prevent failure is impossible. Failure will always be part of our lives. What we need to do is build resilience in ourselves and in the groups and systems that we work with so that when failure does occur, the impacts are small and the recovery is easy. 

We can take steps to make failure less likely, and that's a good part of building resilience, but we must never make the mistake of telling ourselves that through our actions we can prevent failure. 

So what does resilience look like? At a system level it might be some contingency so that if someone misses some parts on a budget, the program isn't delayed waiting for re- approval of funds. It might be a regular catch-up between groups so that unplanned changes are caught early before they become huge problems. It might be a regular coffee catch-up to ensure that relationships stay strong in the face of problems.

At a community level it could be designated safe houses in case of an emergency. A commitment to check on neighbours. Sharing food from backyard gardens. Cooking meals for those who are sick or caring for others. Forming a strong network that can spring into action when trouble strikes.

At a personal level it could be a commitment to self care - time set aside for relaxing and unwinding. It could be a commitment to strengthen relationships with a monthly date night. It could just be acknowledgement that among the failures, there are a lot of successes and on the whole we are doing a pretty good job. It might be a commitment to learn a technique like pommodoro to help focus and resist that YouTube tab that's open on the browser.

And now, having focused and written my post, I hear cat videos calling.