In my youth (I know I’m still pretty young so lets just say that by youth I mean prior to college) I would try new things with confidence that if I was interested in it I would succeed at it. I have to give credit to my parents for that attitude since they were always encouraging, and I’m pretty sure they have never told me I couldn’t do something. That got me pretty far in life, but when I started college I met with my first failure (by failure I mean that I wasn’t able to do something that I really wanted to do). Worst of all it was in mathematics…up to my first college math class I not only had been the top of the class (not that impressive when there are only 2 in your class until high school) but I always finished with at least 100% in the class. I think in my algebra class I had 108% on the year thanks to extra credit or curving with throwing out the top score.
My math skills were good enough to get me into a calculus class in which everyone else had already had an intro to calculus class before. So when they started talking about derivatives I seriously thought the instructor had lost her mind. For about the first month of the class I thought I was going to completely fail because I had no idea what was going on. Anxiety was rising and had this crippling fear that I wasn’t as good at math as I always thought, but then one day I sat down and just thought about the worst case scenario. I realized even if it turns out that I wasn’t as smart as I thought, the worst thing anyone could do is kick me out of college. I knew I was a hard worker and don’t have a problem taking any job no matter what it is so I’d always be able to put food on the table. This reality allowed me to stop worrying about my “image” and just try to learn. To my surprise everything started to make complete sense and I even managed to finish at the top of the class (not with a 100% though…that was basically impossible after the first day).
Honestly I can look back on my life and realize failure is the key to basically all my successes as well as all my missed opportunities. If I accept the possibility of failure then I usually did as well as I possibly could, but if I was afraid of failure then I simply would either fail or simply not even try. I hate the comment “failure isn’t an option.” It is always an option and a strong possibility if you are actually trying something difficult. Sadly too many people buy into that stupid cliché and then will only try things they are sure they’ll be able to do. One of my mentors at NASA told me that NASA’s biggest problem is that they don’t have enough failures. If they were actually trying really totally new ideas and stretching the limits of science and technology there would be a ton of failed tries (strong support of that is when we were trying to make the first rockets…we failed miserably at first but kept trying). The reality is they will only do things they know they can do that sound or look cool because they feel they no longer can afford to fail.
You can fail and probably will at some point in your life…just don’t let that keep you from trying something else because you just might succeed next time.
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5 comments:
I really enjoyed you blog. I believe that when someone fails at a task that they may learn alot more than what you think you have learned. I it gives you the drive to figure out a new concept. Sometimes the end result is nothing like you inteded from the beginning. When we succeed at somthing without having to work hard for the end result it is done without much more thought.
Keep up the good work!
Well said, ae! That's exactly what I have been thinking lately.
Also, how to define "failure" or "success" depends on one's perspective. As I become more mature, I tend to have more peace knowing that I have worked hard, tried my best and learned something, no matter what the result might be.
Someone once told me that "failure" is nothing more than an unintended result. Penicillin, as an example, was an unintended result that now saves lives. It's all about perspective... which is much easier to have once one removes themselves from the situation.
its interesting, ur post, and the mention of NASA, since their slogan or punchline is 'Failure is not an Option'.
I personally think you have enough great posts here. Blog is not 100% an enemy of thoughts.
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