Failing to Learn

Several years ago, two partners and I planned a community event. Everyone told us it was a great idea. We got wonderful publicity from the local paper. Without much marketing on our part, lots of exhibitors bought space. On the Friday evening that the event opened, television crews showed up. The exhibitors showed up. Almost nobody else came. We were in shock.

When I realized that we had a gigantic bomb on our hands, I went to the hotel room that served as our headquarters, curled up in a fetal position and cried for an hour. It felt like a public humiliation.

Six months later, I was well on my way to creating the business of my dreams. I had gotten over the emotional distress of that failure and was finally ready to take a good look at where we went wrong. I learned valuable lessons from the experience and have never repeated the worst of those mistakes.

As grateful as I am for that, there was an even greater gift that came from that horrible flop. As I was reinventing my business, I found that little detours and disappointments rolled right off of me. When things didn’t work out as I had planned, I found that disappointment was temporary and I rallied quickly. Nothing was ever as horrible as that humiliating time so by comparison, any failure seemed mild and manageable.

Surviving disaster can make us stronger, but it doesn’t have to make us heartless. If anything, I had more empathy for struggles-my own and others. While I realize that this failure speeded up my moving in a better direction, I suspect that there were other blessings I still don’t recognize. As Thomas Edison-who amassed thousands of failures-said, “Failures, so called, are but finger posts pointing out the right direction to those who are willing to learn.”

Mistakes and failures are only of value when we use them to move forward. It takes a fair amount of awareness to understand that. “I have known men who could see through the motivations of others with the skill of a clairvoyant,” said Bernard Baruch, “only to prove blind to their own mistakes.” Quite simply, if we fail to learn, we are forced to learn to live with failure.

While some mistakes are necessary parts of our curriculum, there’s a common error that we can avoid. It’s a lesson I learned long ago-and was reminded of again when I had a seminar that didn’t go well. Now, of course, I want every single seminar to be as good as I can make it; sometimes I fail to get the cooperation of the students, however. Feeling quite drained by the unpleasant experience, I gave myself permission to fret and fuss for a bit. “It’s just one seminar,” I pointed out to myself. “It’s not your dream.”

When you’re feeling discouraged or think you have failed beyond recovery, remember this one concept: do not confuse a project with a dream. One failed project does not make for a failed dream. It’s essential that we understand the difference and don’t make the biggest mistake of all by abandoning our heartfelt dreams.

Or just memorize these words from George Bernard Shaw: “A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.”

Barbara J. Winter is a Las Vegas-based self-employment advocate and writer. She is the author of Making a Living Without a Job. She conducts seminars throughout the US and Canada on creative self-employment. Her newest events are a one-day seminar called What Would an Entrepreneur Do? and a three-day event, Compelling Storytelling. She also publishes Winning Ways newsletter, now in its twenty-second year of helping people turn passions into profits.
http://www.barbarawinter.com