THE DARK SIDE OF NOT FAILING
I was good in academics, but not in this…
My son told me that one of his classmates, never got a grade lower than A. I told my son that it’s bad.
“Why?”he was confused. “I thought you always wanted me to get good grades.”
“I said, work hard, if you didn’t get an A, that’s fine. I want you to feel what failure is.”
This was my advice for my son, because I knew first hand, how it feels to be invincible. Before, I thought I won’t fail, and I didn’t want to fail too. Failure sucks so why would anybody wants to fail.
My mom and dad were both academicians, they were both professors. Although I can’t remember them pushing me hard in academics, I worked hard to get good grades. What do you expect in a household where stories sometimes revolve around the grades of my parent’s students — you work hard to get good grades.
In my high school year, I developed a good study habits and were friends with straight A students that I pushed myself to be better too. I got good grades. In the end, I thought it was easy to get good grades.I became good in academics and went to graduate school.
I worked after graduate school, but it was here that I learn, you have to fail sometimes and be vulnerable. As the richest man in the world said,
Success is a lousy teacher, it is telling you that you can’t fail.
Bill gates said that, or something similar to that. Success makes you believe you can’t fail.
That became my problem. I thought I can’t fail. I thought the world owes me everything cause I worked hard.
But this perception changed when I was handed the pink slip because our company went belly up. At that time, I have a toddler in tow.
“How can I feed my family?”
I was scared and confused. My mind was running scenarios and was telling myself “This company can’t fail.”
But we just did. And I was let go.
I taught t I learned from that experience. But when I started my own business several years ago, my product launch was a bust. I was so confident that straight out from the gate, I’ll be having lots of money. But I was wrong.
Losing money hurts.
But it was a painful reminder that you will fail in business, in one way or another. I failed on the opening round. I was depressed, asking myself, how can I recuperate that money.
Now, I see failures in my business as painful lessons. I didn’t loss money, I learned an experience. It hurts so bad but you need to experience these. I cried one time, my face buried in my hands, after checking my barren bank account.
When my son’s basketball team lost the playoffs game last fall, he was crying. As a parent, you want him to experience the magical journey of going all the way. They were so close of punching their ticket to the finals.
They lost by 2 points. And the bad part was that they lost to a bitter cross-town rival.
I told him, that’s how you learn, by failing. As a parent, you don’t want to see them crying after the loss, but I think it toughened him and the rest of the team.
Failing hurts, but I don’t want him to believe that success is always guaranteed. I want him to learn that failure is part of success.
I need to remind myself that too.
