Letting Go
How should you feel when you lose your job? Obviously, if you get fired because you exposed the company to a multimillion dollar law suit, or punched a fellow worker in an argument over a steak, you have no one to blame for yourself. How should you feel though if, through no fault of your own, you've been 'let go'. I recently met up with a friend who wanted an answer to that very question. She, along with a large percentage of the office, had been taken into a room, the remainder of the company taken into another room, and then, in a scene clearly inspired by the Voice, Britain's Got Talent, and the X Factor, one group was told they were going home, while the remainder were delighted to find they'd made it through to boot camp.
The problem here is that it's very hard not to take it personally. Some are staying, some are going, so its easy to assume that the stayers have some quality, some special essence, not possessed by the goers. This is probably true, but it's useful to remember that the quality is almost certainly a lower salary and a willingness to accept additional work with no additional remuneration.
Still, my friend wanted to know if it would reflect badly on her. She had done a sterling job, and the reason the company wasn't as successful as it would like can be summed up as 'if it were that easy, we would all be millionaires'. The taint of failure is a hard thing to shake off though. We seem to believe, for some reason, that failure is a bad thing.
The truth, however, is that failure is often a good thing. My favourite story is of a young Thomas Edison, trying to invent the lightbulb and, a long way into the attempt, being interviewed about his continued lack of success.
“Mr Edison,” said the interviewer, “you have tried 200 times to make a light bulb. You have failed 200 times to make that light bulb. When are you going to finally admit your failure and give up?”
Thomas Edison sucked in an engineer's breath, a sort of backwards whistle that echoes on the back teeth, and put his hands on his braces.
“Madam,” he said (for it was a madam he was talking to), “I have not failed 200 times to make a light bulb. I have merely identified 200 ways in which it does not work.”
Now, perhaps this is a pat story, a neat little aphorism to trot out when things aren't going your way, but the truth is that he did go on to invent the light bulb. He didn't give up, he didn't falter, he just steadily ploughed through the many ways in which it didn't work until he finally identified the one that did. Very few succeed at anything on their first try and none succeed if they do not try at all. Failure is not just inevitable, it is the necessary path to success. Failure contains lessons. We learn what doesn't work. Success tells us only that the last attempt succeeded, though whether by luck, judgement or the grace of god it is very difficult to tell.
So I say celebrate failure. Set out, not only to try, but to try and fail. The only failure that matters is the one we can't recover from. The one we can pick ourselves up from, the one that teaches us how to deal with adversity, how to weather the storm and come out the other side, how to learn from and improve on our mistakes, is the one that will take us further than we could ever have dreamed. And all those that were satisfied with the achievable, with aiming low and reaping the inevitable lack of reward will look up and say save us...
...and we'll say 'alright then, I'll give it a go.'
The problem here is that it's very hard not to take it personally. Some are staying, some are going, so its easy to assume that the stayers have some quality, some special essence, not possessed by the goers. This is probably true, but it's useful to remember that the quality is almost certainly a lower salary and a willingness to accept additional work with no additional remuneration.
Still, my friend wanted to know if it would reflect badly on her. She had done a sterling job, and the reason the company wasn't as successful as it would like can be summed up as 'if it were that easy, we would all be millionaires'. The taint of failure is a hard thing to shake off though. We seem to believe, for some reason, that failure is a bad thing.
The truth, however, is that failure is often a good thing. My favourite story is of a young Thomas Edison, trying to invent the lightbulb and, a long way into the attempt, being interviewed about his continued lack of success.
“Mr Edison,” said the interviewer, “you have tried 200 times to make a light bulb. You have failed 200 times to make that light bulb. When are you going to finally admit your failure and give up?”
Thomas Edison sucked in an engineer's breath, a sort of backwards whistle that echoes on the back teeth, and put his hands on his braces.
“Madam,” he said (for it was a madam he was talking to), “I have not failed 200 times to make a light bulb. I have merely identified 200 ways in which it does not work.”
Now, perhaps this is a pat story, a neat little aphorism to trot out when things aren't going your way, but the truth is that he did go on to invent the light bulb. He didn't give up, he didn't falter, he just steadily ploughed through the many ways in which it didn't work until he finally identified the one that did. Very few succeed at anything on their first try and none succeed if they do not try at all. Failure is not just inevitable, it is the necessary path to success. Failure contains lessons. We learn what doesn't work. Success tells us only that the last attempt succeeded, though whether by luck, judgement or the grace of god it is very difficult to tell.
So I say celebrate failure. Set out, not only to try, but to try and fail. The only failure that matters is the one we can't recover from. The one we can pick ourselves up from, the one that teaches us how to deal with adversity, how to weather the storm and come out the other side, how to learn from and improve on our mistakes, is the one that will take us further than we could ever have dreamed. And all those that were satisfied with the achievable, with aiming low and reaping the inevitable lack of reward will look up and say save us...
...and we'll say 'alright then, I'll give it a go.'
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