Are We Hardwired to Succeed?
From birth until your bones can no longer bear the weight of yourself, it seems that we have been taught that failure not only is bad, it's actually the worst thing ever: not only sets you back, but prevents you from doing what you have to do and what you want to do, and is, in the end, a source of humiliation.
It's curious that even self-created goals that other people know about can be a predictor of humiliation in case of failure. Even if there are others around you about who you don't really care, depending on your personallity, there's a chance you will. Such will make you perceive such humiliation as something that you'll have to carry unrelentlessly.
Where's the problem here? Is it part of our nature to avoid failure in order to achieve set goals, or was it (and pardon the cliché) society that throughout all the history and the years that created this unchanging need to succeed and to shun failure in any way or form?
In schools, universities, and most education facilities, the most obvious evaluation ranges from absolute failure to passing courses or exams; however, and please allow the generalization here, failing an exam is still regarded as just that. Failing. Not a learning experience, not a possibility for something new, not something that could ever bring something good out of it. Never. This is worsened by the fact that many times we are paying for this education, hence failing is also equivalent to losing money.
The good news is that this mindset seems to be slowly shifting. More and more you see cheesy motivational posts in social networks claiming that the great thing about breaking a knee, is that you get to heal it. The more you put yourself out there, the greater the possible rewards. The problem with failure is that you also have to account for possible setbacks. I can see a few when it comes to breaking knees. But let's keep with the main storyline: shifting mindset.
Not only in social media (representing the views of every John and Jane out there), but also in business and more formal situations, a certain degree of non-methodic failure is allowed.
The question now is to which degree should failure be accepted. Examining possible outcomes is always needed, but depending on the situation, this can have a great degree of difficulty; it is therefore important to know that failure not only is helpful, in many cases it might even be necessary.
With failure you can assert where mistakes were commited and avoid them in the future; push boundaries and know how to better and more intensively push them next time; and most importantly, know which ways you can take in order to succeed in a given task.
It's a way to test the waters. As long as you don't drown, you should give failure a chance without it meaning the complete and utter shedding down of every expectation you ever had.
It's curious that even self-created goals that other people know about can be a predictor of humiliation in case of failure. Even if there are others around you about who you don't really care, depending on your personallity, there's a chance you will. Such will make you perceive such humiliation as something that you'll have to carry unrelentlessly.
Where's the problem here? Is it part of our nature to avoid failure in order to achieve set goals, or was it (and pardon the cliché) society that throughout all the history and the years that created this unchanging need to succeed and to shun failure in any way or form?
In schools, universities, and most education facilities, the most obvious evaluation ranges from absolute failure to passing courses or exams; however, and please allow the generalization here, failing an exam is still regarded as just that. Failing. Not a learning experience, not a possibility for something new, not something that could ever bring something good out of it. Never. This is worsened by the fact that many times we are paying for this education, hence failing is also equivalent to losing money.
The good news is that this mindset seems to be slowly shifting. More and more you see cheesy motivational posts in social networks claiming that the great thing about breaking a knee, is that you get to heal it. The more you put yourself out there, the greater the possible rewards. The problem with failure is that you also have to account for possible setbacks. I can see a few when it comes to breaking knees. But let's keep with the main storyline: shifting mindset.
Not only in social media (representing the views of every John and Jane out there), but also in business and more formal situations, a certain degree of non-methodic failure is allowed.
The question now is to which degree should failure be accepted. Examining possible outcomes is always needed, but depending on the situation, this can have a great degree of difficulty; it is therefore important to know that failure not only is helpful, in many cases it might even be necessary.
With failure you can assert where mistakes were commited and avoid them in the future; push boundaries and know how to better and more intensively push them next time; and most importantly, know which ways you can take in order to succeed in a given task.
It's a way to test the waters. As long as you don't drown, you should give failure a chance without it meaning the complete and utter shedding down of every expectation you ever had.
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