When Failure Becomes Many Things

A guide to rescuing the pieces of what could've been.

In 5^th grade, you’d find my chubby little frame at a school named Bethel.

Most of my memories from this time are pure gold. Playing Oregon Trail on Fridays. Celebrating “fall festival” because Halloween was a bit too spicy. Watching fellow classmates get paddled in the hallways that smelled like day-old PB&Js.

Great times.

But all that is just the backdrop for one of the stickiest failures I’ve ever experienced.

Now, when you look up stories about failure (like I did), you get some real whoppers. People losing their companies, spouses, limbs. I mean some serious sh*t storms of terrible, no good, very bad days. Life-altering stuff.

My story is absolutely nothing like that.

Prepapocalypse

During my entire educational career (high school, college, two masters), I only ever failed one test.

Ok, that’s not entirely true. I also failed a physics one but the professor ended up curving it, like a lot, and so technically it doesn’t count. Plus, no one liked him and that feels like an important data point.

Back to the darkest day of my young existence.

There I am, sitting in 5^th grade English class, and the teacher passes out this test on prepositions. I look down, and my mind goes blank.

I have no idea what a preposition even is. The test might as well be in French. I can feel my chubby little neck starting to sweat.

But I take a deep a breath and remind myself, I’m a straight-A student, this’ll be easy! And so, I wing it. Marking whatever the hell seems like it could be a preposition (is it words that start with ‘p’? Are they short words or long ones? Or maybe they come before nouns?).

Two days later, the teacher swims through the rows of desks, smiling or frowning as she hands the tests back, face down, of course, to save the failures from shame.

At this point, I’m feeling like it might be alright. Maybe I did know what prepositions were and my nerves just got the best of me?

Then, while still a few desks away, the teacher and I make eye contact, just for a split second, and I see a face I’ve never seen before during my educational career. Sh*t.  

My stomach drops. I shoot a look at the door. I can make it if I run. And if I run fast enough, I might make it to Canada before my parents find out I’m a failure. I can start a new life milking trees for syrup.

The plan is barely formed when I hear the sound of paper smacking my desk. I keep my head down, slide the paper close, and peel back the top just enough to see the red-penned truth.

F.

What Even is Failure?

We only like to hear about failure from successful people because it gives us hope.

And I mean, they do a great job of hyping it up. They call it a great teacher, a foundation, a learning experience. They say it built character and made them the men they are today. But all of it can feel so…empty. 

Because failure never feels like that when you’re in it. And people don’t look at other people failing and say, “Wow, what a person of character!” They say, “Wtf were they thinking?”

For our second f-word, I wanted to avoid those traps as much as possible. Yes, we’re going to talk about the redeeming qualities of failure and why it’s necessary (like actually required) for massive luck.

But we’re also not going to dance around the fact that it sucks. That it comes with a heavy cost. Financially, emotionally…and sometimes even more than that. Some people who fail do it so hard they break. Permanently.

There are no shoulds here. No timelines on how quickly you should rebound. No empty words about how valuable your f*ck up was.

What I am hoping to do is offer a kinder way to look at your failures, past and present, and find a useful way of including them in your story. It’s helped me, so maybe it can help you too.

Let’s begin with the basics: Failure is an unachieved result.

Failure as a Thing vs. Many Things

When I wrote my notes for this article, I kept bumping up against the idea of failure as a stopping short.

When I failed my test, my grade was less than I needed it to be. When an athlete comes in second place, they're short of their goal. When a business shutters, its profits fell short of its needs.

This "short" view is also event-based. A thing happened, and we decided to classify that thing as a failure — the moment our result was unachieved.

This is why people say things like “The only failure is quitting.”¹ Because quitting is stopping, and failing is stopping prematurely.

But what if failure wasn't a thing but many things? Not an event or a point in time or a single result, but more like a plate shattering on the ground breaking into 30 pieces.

And what if those pieces, all different shapes and sizes, could be rescued for something else?

The Web of Luck

I promise when we bring all of these ideas together, it’ll be as satisfying as the ending of Bubble Boy (a criminally underrated Jake Gyllenhaal movie).

In order to do that (aka in order to understand failure in all its glory), we have to talk about luck.

Now, I like to think of luck as a web you construct to catch opportunities. The bigger + stronger the web is, the better opportunities you have the capacity to catch.

Most people have no idea how to build this web, so they stay unlucky. As luck would have it (see what I did there), you're going to learn how right now.

“When I consider taking on a new big project, I first ask myself who I know who would be helpful… In my universe of contacts, which is fairly huge at this point in my career, I would say I met [most] of those folks in the process of failing at one thing or another. And if I ask myself what skills and knowledge I need for my next big idea, invariably that means drawing on knowledge I gained while circling the drain in some doomed project of yore.”
— Scott Adams

That quote is from the creator of Dilbert, who, in their book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, includes a chapter detailing 23 (yes, twenty-three) separate failures. Most of which were doozies. I’m talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars lost, lawsuits, years wasted — categorically harrier than my failed preposition test.

And yet, they were the ingredients for Adams’ success. They were why he met certain people, picked up particular skills, and stumbled into unfamiliar arenas. All of which, down the line, came together to enable new opportunities.

Failures, when reassembled, make you lucky.

Building Your Web

When you decide to look at failure as a shattered opportunity, you’re given the gift of pieces.

Failure as a single thing is weighty. It’s heavy and cold and feels like a kettlebell hanging around your neck. But failure as a collection of broken pieces is lighter because you can choose what to pick up (relationships, skills, resources, experiences, beliefs, etc.).

Then, those pieces can be used as new connecting points for your web.

This is kind of what the web of luck built from failure looks like in my head (albeit with fewer shoes). It’s a bit dilapidated, messy, and colorful, but it brings together everything you choose to rescue in just the right way.

The hard part – the really sticky grind – is learning how to pick up the right pieces and string them together in new, interesting, and helpful ways.

When I failed my preposition test, I had to choose what pieces to pick up from that experience.

• I saw that I didn’t prepare enough.

  • Piece: I will become a better student.

• I saw that my unstable home life (which is a whole-ass topic for another time) distracted me from school.

  • Piece: I can better manage my emotions.

• I saw what it felt like to disappoint authority figures.

  • Piece: I will become a kiss ass (Granted, I had to unlearn this one, but I promised to be honest so…).

I could have picked up unhelpful things like I’m a bad student so I hate school or my English teacher sucks so I'm going to ignore her. But I didn't, and am immensely grateful for that.

So many of us pick up the wrong stuff from failure and suffer the consequences for the rest of our lives.

When I added the better student piece to my web, it meant I started doing extra work. Reading harder books (which felt like mini-failures) and entering writing competitions (to improve my skills). These further built out the web in that direction.

Fast-forward and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say I’m a professional writer today because I failed a preposition test in 5^th grade. It was the first piece.

The Good, the Bad, and the Stuck

Ok, this is getting long. I'm sure we'll revisit failure many more times in our little BPS universe. But let's get a few things straight.

How do you know what pieces to pick up from a shattered failure?

You pick up the ones that will get you closer to who you want to be. Simple as that. No one can tell you what that is. But you’re gut knows. And you can literally interpret failure however the f you want.

How do you connect them together in the right way?

Trial and error, my friend. Bending steel is a process. Don’t expect to get it right on the first try.

What if I feel like a failure? Is that a bad thing?

I told myself I was a failure for a long time. I was really mean to myself. It was super unhelpful. What did help was shifting my perspective to see every failure as a gift of pieces from which I could build something new. It gave me the courage to try stuff again, knowing that I would either achieve some result (a really basic definition of success we’ll challenge one day) or I’d gain more pieces to work with.

It’s not perfect, but it got me doing again – and that’s honestly the goal. Reinterpreting failure so you no longer feel stuck. You don’t even have to believe in yourself at first. Just do and belief will come later.

Failure is bad when it leads to immobility. (no new pieces added)

Failure is good when it leads to new, different, transformed action. (many pieces added)

That’s it.

PS: This is the last tip that has helped me avoid getting stuck in my head when a shattering happens. Instead of saying anything related to "I’m a failure,” I immediately say, “This is new.” It trains my mind to look for unfamiliar pieces, even if the failure itself resembles a fumble I’ve done a thousand times before. And you know what, it works. I always find at least one new piece to add to my web. One new something to move me in a better direction. Every failure makes me a tad bit luckier. How wild is that?

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Challenge #2: Pieces Parts of Failure's Plate

1. From You Are A Badass by Jen Sincero. The quote goes on to say, “Everything else is just gathering information.”