How To Become Immune To Failure
CONSECRATED No. 75 - 1 Thought. 2 Quotes. 3 Verses.
1 THOUGHT
"Fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm fearsome, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore. They leave that wisdom to those to whom it appeals. When the storm comes — when night falls — what's worse: the danger or the fear of danger? Give me reality, the danger itself."
Vincent van Gogh
I recently read the story of a billionaire founder and CEO whose father would ask her and her siblings every night at the dinner table, “What did you fail at today?”
If they didn’t have an answer, he would encourage them that they needed to attempt something more difficult or try something new. She later attributed this push to her incredible success as an entrepreneur. Failure to her wasn’t a thing to fear, but a chance to grow. If she wasn’t failing from time to time, she wasn’t growing.
In perhaps his most famous speech, president Theodore Roosevelt used a phrase that often haunts me. He spoke of the type of man or woman who live in a perpetual fear of “what if?” Who live in a paralysis due to fear of the future, fear of failure, fear of the unknown. He called them, “Those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
They never knew defeat, but they never knew victory either.
Terrifying.
It’s all too easy to live a life like this. When I get to the end of my life, I don’t want to someone to ask me, “What did you accomplish?” And my answer to be, “Well, I don’t know what I accomplished, but at least I never failed!”
I love what van Gogh said in the opening quote. What’s worse? The fear of danger or the danger itself? Give me the danger.
No one has ever accomplished anything of significance by avoiding failure.
Famously, when asked by a reporter how he felt about failing 10,000 times when attempting to create the lightbulb, Thomas Edison replied, “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
I want to live with a perspective that looks at what other people call failure as simply eliminating the ways that will not work.
Perhaps one of greatest gifts we can give ourselves is developing a greater level of immunity to failure.
How do you do this? I would recommend two ways:
Firstly, how do you gain immunity against a disease? You have to expose yourself to it in small doses. This is how a vaccine works.
Try something with a little more risk. Push yourself one step farther. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “Do something every day that scares you.”
Secondly, like Edison, you have to reframe how you view failure. The CEO I mentioned at the beginning started out selling copy machines door-to-door. She got really good at hearing the word “no.” So when it came time to get funding for what would turn into her billion dollar company, she didn’t quit when she heard no over and over and over again. She was immune to no. All she needed was one yes.
She didn’t see the no’s as failures, but simply as eliminating the ways that will not work. Every no was one step closer to a yes.
If you can reframe failure from a death sentence to your dream (which is how most people see it) to an opportunity to learn, improve, or grow, you’ll be well on your way to immunity.
2 QUOTES
“Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.”
- Jerzy Gregorek
“Never allow yourself to feel equal to your work, if you ever feel that spirit growing on you be afraid.”
- Phillip Brooks
3 VERSES
“The LORD makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand.”
Psalm 37:23-24
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
1 John 4:18
“For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes.”
Proverbs 24:16
A RESOURCE
This course on Jonah from the Bible Project taught by Dr. Tim Mackie has been blowing my mind. It’s 14 hours worth of content. So it’s not a small endeavor to go through, but it will enrich your understanding of the Bible so much.
