A Few Thoughts on Failure

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Yesterday, I was handed a major setback in my plans for an entrepreneurial enterprise I’ve been working very hard for lately. (I don’t want to say more than that about it, but wanted to offer that information as context.) But, in a word, it made me feel like a failure.

After about an hour and a half of stubbornly resisting my partner’s very sweet and sincere attempts to cheer me up, though, I finally calmed down enough to watch the first episode of the new American Idol season. It didn’t take long before I was laughing and feeling less sorry for myself (certainly in comparison to some of the contestants).

Based on how many people acknowledged that they can’t stand to watch otherwise reasonable people make fools of themselves on TV in the Phobia post, I imagine watching the first few episodes of American Idol (when the really, really awful applicants get air time) is entirely too painful for many here, but it is an amazing human drama.

Sully put it this way:

I have to say that the early "American Idol" shows are some of the most consistently entertaining and unbearably cruel programs in America. Last night gave us that tender line between delusions of talent and borderline personality disorder – and smudged it. Are those people for real or very clever plants? I’m hoping the latter.

There were a few doozies.

I was already thinking about "failure" when watching the show, but not only because of my setback. I had also watched John Kerry question Condoleeza Rice at her hearing. Instapunk has a particularly, well, punkish post about it:

At one point last night, we thought Sen. Kerry was just going to stop his questions, hang his head in his hands, and just start crying, "Sweet Jesus, I just wanted to be President — why? why? why?" And, his aides would help him back to his office and Ms Rice would smilingly look around the room for her next question.

It didn’t happen, but we think we got close when Ms Rice explained to the Senator that N. Korea was unlike Iraq, "Because, Senator, despite the problems with North Korea, it’s actually not sitting in the middle of the Middle East …." Also, N. Korea? No oil. Sen. Kerry noticeably stammered at that exchange and it was right about there we thought we were going to see the tears.

I hadn’t seen it that way. I took Kerry’s questions to be sincere and assumed Rice had as well. Her answers suggested she did. Instapunk’s obvious delight in the symbolism of the exchange, however, leads nicely into my main point.

Failure is an attitude, a response to a setback. Not a sentence. Yes, there are conclusions you can’t escape (Kerry is not the President, Mary Roach will not be the next American Idol, I will have to move on to plan B in my endeavors), but how you face a setback determines whether you, yourself, are a failure. Not the conclusion itself.

The classic example of where attitude triumphs over setback, of course, is Edison et al. and the experiments leading up to the invention of the light bulb. The Pop cultural example is William Hung, the truly awful American Idol contestant, who snatched victory from the mouth of humiliating defeat by rising above the competition and placing it wisely into the overall context of his life.

Now, clearly, it sucks when things don’t work out the way you had hoped. Especially when you really busted your butt. But I’ve had enough setbacks in my life to understand that a good night’s sleep and an hour or two’s worth of lighthearted distraction restore perspective and, if you stay focused, can harden your resolve to where you recognize the opportunities to snatch victory from the mouth of defeat. It may not be your ideal, but it may turn out to make you happier than your presumed ideal would have. At least that’s what I’m telling myself until I can figure out an appropriate way to punish the freaks who crushed my dream yesterday. (just kidding…they’re already dead…just kidding…)

34 thoughts on “A Few Thoughts on Failure”

  2. Yesterday, I was handed a major setback in my plans for an entrepreneurial enterprise I’ve been working very hard for lately.
    Sorry to hear that.

  4. Failing (even temporarily) sucks , but you definitely aren’t a failure.
    If you are in the mood for something darkly funny, I reccommend the demotivational pictures of Despair, Inc.
    I think some of my favorites are:
    Meetings–none of us are as dumb as all of us.
    Adversity–that which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
    and,
    Regret–it hurts to admit when you make mistakes–but when they’re big enough, the pain only lasts a second. (Picture of a snowboarder hurtling off a sheer cliff fact)

  5. You’re always a winner in my book, Edward Underscore.
    Even if you’re broke and homeless.

    Ditto, although in that case I might consider you a rather loserish sort of winner. 😉

  6. Oh, Edward: here was I, sitting around feeling sorry for myself just because someone called up and asked, why haven’t you replied to the urgent email I sent you last Friday? and I said, what urgent email?, and it turned out that my mail program had decided, on JAN 4, to check only one of my two email accounts, and I had about 250 (!!) emails to wade through — but I’m really sorry it didn’t work. Are there other fish in the sea of financiers, or is it really off to some different plan entirely?

  7. Without any more info than you gave us in the open thread, I can only remind you that there are always more investors/banks out there.
    If you’d like an objective (well, not really objective since I like you), opinion on your venture, I’d be happy to take a look….

  9. fdl said it best, Edward, never give up. It’s only at that point that you would have actually failed. Otherwise, it’s just another brick in the wall. All in All.

  10. Many, many thanks for the well wishes and offers (crionna, I may email you the business plan, if only for your amusement…but I can’t do it until tonight…but the financial part wasn’t the setback, it was the location…and if you know anything about New York real estate, you know why I’m not getting anywhere near the ledge of tall buildings).
    Adversity–that which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
    Sebastian, that was too funny…dead on.

  13. Last night’s American Idol was interesting to me, because I too share the “Embarrassed person”-phobia. I decided to sit and force myself to endure it, because I wanted to gather some experimental evidence on myself. I wish I had thought of doing this during the Rice confirmation hearings, because there was a lot of that bad vibe going on there too. Here are my findings:
    I found that I felt no fear/discomfort at all when the person making a fool of themselves were shown for only a moment or too. The fear/discomfort raised quite a bit when they were shown for extended periods of time, especially when they made cuts to the judges faces. The judges expression could lessen or make the feelings worse. For example, if they showed Paula or Randy gamely trying to bob their head to the tune, it wasn’t so bad, but if people were hiding their faces, opening mocking, etc, it was much worse. It rose further and much faster if they interviewed the person ahead of time. It got downright unbearable when they showed the after singing discussion with the judges, especially if the person was just hurt or confused instead of defiant or in denial.
    And strangely (or not), it evaporated completely if the person became a dick after the audition. The relief was immediate and intense, and I was literally able to go from hiding my eyes and cringing to laughing out loud.
    So, I learned that seeing a total stranger humiliated for a brief enough time allowed me to share in the amusement. There was an equilibrium period where I was less amused and more distressed as the time period increased, I stopped enjoying the humiliation at all when I indentified with the person, but I was able to laugh again if the person turned out to be not so nice or gracious in the end.
    I remember being absolutely unable to watch the Hung audition, even in replays, because he was clueless, horrible, and polite and optimistic to a fault. I’d rather have fingers broken that watch that kind of stuff. Was anyone else motivated to more deeply consider their fears as a direct result of that phobia-thread?

  14. I missed AI — was it truly too embrassin g?
    Not for me, although I did have to stop watching a few times…overall, it was the same combination of moderately talented people and a few delusional ones. There were three people whose story we got involved in, none the least of which was the last contestant Mary Roach…she scared us. She scared the judges too I think.
    You could see her coming back in a wig in the next audition, whipping out a butcher knife, and lunging at Simon.

  15. Oh, and as for setbacks: My first foray into self-employment entrepreneurial enterprises was a disaster that almost broke me. But I learned a helluva lot from the experience, and four years later was prepared to try again. Is been almost three years since, and things are going great.
    I hope it doesn’t take quite that long for you to get back in the saddle, but small failures that you can recover from are kind of beneficial. It can clearly see from experience what works and what doesn’t so you can streamline and focus on the good.

  16. If you are in the mood for something darkly funny, I reccommend the demotivational pictures of Despair, Inc.
    Sebastian, you just made my day.
    This one is my favorite so far.

  17. I agree with Gromit…those demotivational slogans were just the ticket:
    favorite so far
    “Discovery: A company that will go to the ends of the earth for it people will find that it can hire them for about 10% of the cost of Americans.”

  20. Thank you, thank you Sebastian. — I’m rather partial to this , which is a perfect sendup of the entire faux-profound genre. But then there’s this, with its wonderfully apt picture, and this, and the metajoke of this ….

  21. Oh, that’s annoying. I stumbled on despair.com late last fall, and they didn’t have 2005 calendars yet, but now they’re out of stock? grrr … arrgh

  22. “Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others” has always been one of my favorites, but I didn’t know enough about the particulars of the situation you were going through to feel safe about quoting it. 🙂
    And hilzoy, i had totally forgotten about “Motivation: If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will soon be doing.”
    That one made me laugh out loud.
    Speaking of out of stock, I’m not 100% sure it is a real site. Someone told me that they tried to order something and couldn’t do it. Someone buy one and tell me!

  23. No, they’re only out of one version of the calendar. They still have the extended version, which I just ordered 🙂

  24. Seb – They took my plastic money info, just like a real site, so they’d *better* send me areal calendar! 🙂

  27. tnxs Sebastian, for the wonderfull link.
    Greatly enjoyed and I finally found the perfect gift for my sister-in-law 😉

  31. I remember seeing Futility, I think it was, almost ten years ago and absolutely loving it. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Sebastian.

  32. I’m not 100% sure it is a real site.
    Oh it is real – at least the posters are – I’ve seen them in stores out here.
    This is my favorite.
    Limitations – Until you spread your wings, you’ll have no idea how far you can walk
    (it really needs to be seen with the picture)

  33. I have this feeling, deep in my gut, that the deluge of reality shows, advertising, and other forms of media making a spectacle out of glorifying stupidity and generally encouraging people to enjoy watching someone fail miserably or do horribly selfish and awful things to other people… that all of these things are doing serious damage to our soul as a nation.
    I can’t put my finger on it. I don’t have the education necessary to put it in the right terms. But it bothers me a lot. And in a strange way, it actually helps me understand what’s going through the minds of those people who rail against pornography and video games.
    Mind you, I disagree with those people and think they’re largely full of shit–but I understand how they feel about their subject matter.

  34. Late to the thread, as usual. Despair.com has been one of my favorite places to send people since…well, since about 1998 or so. My favorites are the Meetings and Mistakes ones. They’re mostly all good, but those made me laugh pretty hard. Especially the Meetings one, which I’ve gathered quite a lot of empirical data to support.
    Which is not to say they’re all like that. My recent meeting in Dayton was possibly the most effective business meeting I’ve ever been involved in. Of course, most of the really good stuff happened after the customer left the room and it was just us contractors, but even up until that point it was a standout.
    Possibly the fact that Dayton is such a miserable place that no one had much at stake in leaving, had something to do with it.

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