The Case for Failure

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Last week, I penned a short discussion on self-employment.  This time around, let’s take a look at the main process that drives success: failure.

Failure is a scary word.  It conjures images of bankruptcy, homelessness, divorce, and Myspace.  However, I’m here to tell you that you should make failure one of your best friends.  While I write from a perspective of self-employment and entrepreneurship, the following principles are in my experience as immutable as the laws of physics and are just as universal.

The real power of failure lies in the fear of it.  The fear of failure is what causes us humans to talk of our biggest dreams in the ambiguous terms of ‘someday’ as we kick the can of Time down the short road of our lifespans.  There is a very high perceived potential for social embarrassment in the event our endeavors fall flat, and the respect of our friends and family is something we would hate to lose.  Thus, we prefer to stay in the safe harbor of low risk where we assume everyone else is hanging out with us.

The specific type of failure I have observed the most is the unsuccessful result of attempted entrepreneurship or self-employment.  In my short ~22 months of commissions sales, I have seen more new recruits fail than succeed.  This is not remotely unusual.  Out of all the people that try out or audition for professional sports teams, Broadway shows, or even your local TV news crew, the number of those that make it is far, far smaller than the original pool of applicants.  Even Thomas Edison made vastly more unsuccessful inventions than big hits.

Yet the one common thread that runs through the applicants that eventually succeed is their response to the question that is inevitably presented to everyone that makes the attempt: Did this failure permanently defeat me?

The success of everyone from the newly-signed athlete to the freshly minted multimillionaire selling their company is all that most spectators can see.  What very few ever consider is the submerged iceberg of past failures that their “overnight” heights of success are built upon.  This sounds like common sense, but it has become almost a reflex in our society to assume that the few that make it had some kind of lottery-like luck or unfair advantage that allowed them to succeed.

Now, I’m not saying that everyone reading this should leave their career or go all-in on a Shark Tank-worthy product idea they may think they’ve had.  Instead, my thesis is as follows.

If you dream of something greater, if you feel like you’re slowly losing your future by following your daily routine, if you believe that you’re capable of amazing things – please do not let the fear of failure stop you from making the first steps.  You probably will fail, but only at first.  There will be many discarded attempts and exhausting dead ends that you will have to go through.  However, I promise you that if you refuse to accept failure as your permanent outcome, you will learn from your mistakes and you will begin to see some success in what you’re doing.  Whether it be artistic expression, founding a business, finding a significant other, or pursuing additional education, you will succeed if you simply refuse to be defeated.

Remmy is the founder of Exoverse Products. He joins the SoBros Network as a contributor in the fields of business, tech, auto, travel, and anything else he damn well pleases. Check Exoverse Products out on Instagram @exoverseproducts. 

Follow us on Twitter: @SoBrosNetwork

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