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Subscribe!Fri - Nov 09, 2007 : 10:26 am
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Failure and Innovation
I saw a good movie the other day. It's called "Meet The Robinsons".
If you haven't seen it yet, and you like movies which actually have a moral (kind of tough to find now-a-days), I'd highly recommend it.
A specific part of the movie caught my attention and is the cause for this entry. The part basically consists of a little boy who fails miserably in front of a bunch of pseudo-strangers and that failure affects each and every one of them insomuch that they all end up splattered with peanut butter and jelly. The movie pauses at this point, with everyone looking at the boy in surprise.
About 1.5 seconds later, they all start cheering stating that the boy had failed greatly. "Superb!", "Fantastic!", "Wonderful!", they exclaimed. They then rallied around him for a moment amidst which the statement is heard,
"From failing, you learn. From success, not so much."
For some reason that struck a chord in me.
Yesterday, my wife went with some friends to a new restaurant in Salt Lake, which means that I was on kid-duty.
We decided to go to our favorite trampoline place, "Jump On It".
While we were driving there, I thought quite a bit about how much in life I miss out due to my own laziness, or selfishness, or fear of failure.
I mean... How many things in my life have I not done due to a fear that I might fail? And what, may I ask, is so bad or wrong about failing?
...
The fear of failure is, I believe, somehow believing that we are smaller or worse-off, or not-as-good for trying something and failing. To the extent that we stop trying, I believe it may be, simply because we are left with the failure.
However, to fail at something only to learn from it and ultimately succeed is what dreams are made of. Everything great likely came from failures which ultimately became successes. Light-bulbs, The Revolutionary War (and hence, the USA), electricity, almost all medicine, computers, automobiles, breaking the sound barrier, space travel, the list could go on and on and on.
You might be thinking to yourself, "This is all quite great, Captain Obvious... Tell us something we don't already know..."
But just stop and think for a minute the last time you didn't do something good, or hard, for whatever reason - and chances are you didn't do it at least to some degree due to the chance of failure.
And that, my friend, is sad.
Anyway... I'll stop preaching now.
Just go try something new, which you've always wanted to try, and see if you like it despite the fact that you might do it wrong the first time. You might be surprised at unfound talents or strength which you never would know otherwise.
Life is too short to worry about failure.
If you haven't seen it yet, and you like movies which actually have a moral (kind of tough to find now-a-days), I'd highly recommend it.
A specific part of the movie caught my attention and is the cause for this entry. The part basically consists of a little boy who fails miserably in front of a bunch of pseudo-strangers and that failure affects each and every one of them insomuch that they all end up splattered with peanut butter and jelly. The movie pauses at this point, with everyone looking at the boy in surprise.
About 1.5 seconds later, they all start cheering stating that the boy had failed greatly. "Superb!", "Fantastic!", "Wonderful!", they exclaimed. They then rallied around him for a moment amidst which the statement is heard,
"From failing, you learn. From success, not so much."
For some reason that struck a chord in me.
Yesterday, my wife went with some friends to a new restaurant in Salt Lake, which means that I was on kid-duty.
We decided to go to our favorite trampoline place, "Jump On It".
While we were driving there, I thought quite a bit about how much in life I miss out due to my own laziness, or selfishness, or fear of failure.
I mean... How many things in my life have I not done due to a fear that I might fail? And what, may I ask, is so bad or wrong about failing?
...
The fear of failure is, I believe, somehow believing that we are smaller or worse-off, or not-as-good for trying something and failing. To the extent that we stop trying, I believe it may be, simply because we are left with the failure.
However, to fail at something only to learn from it and ultimately succeed is what dreams are made of. Everything great likely came from failures which ultimately became successes. Light-bulbs, The Revolutionary War (and hence, the USA), electricity, almost all medicine, computers, automobiles, breaking the sound barrier, space travel, the list could go on and on and on.
You might be thinking to yourself, "This is all quite great, Captain Obvious... Tell us something we don't already know..."
But just stop and think for a minute the last time you didn't do something good, or hard, for whatever reason - and chances are you didn't do it at least to some degree due to the chance of failure.
And that, my friend, is sad.
Anyway... I'll stop preaching now.
Just go try something new, which you've always wanted to try, and see if you like it despite the fact that you might do it wrong the first time. You might be surprised at unfound talents or strength which you never would know otherwise.
Life is too short to worry about failure.
Comment by Orson Jones on Nov. 09, 2007 @ 07:48 pm
An amazing talk by Sir Ken Robinson deals with this idea specifically. It talks about how schools and businesses are making failure seem bad.
Comment by Orson Jones on Nov. 15, 2007 @ 09:10 am
Consequences of people afraid to be wrong. Here is a Bruce Schneier posting on The War on The Unexpected. (War on Terror)
War on the unexpected:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_the.html
War on the unexpected:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_the.html