Learning Is Failing

Ada just turned nine months today and every single time she tries to walk, she falls. What advice would you give her after her seventh failed attempt to walk? How about her twenty-seventh, ninety-first, two-hundredth time? Do you tell Ada it's not meant to be or do you tell her to stand up and try am again and again and again and again?

Learning is a process of failing till you succeed. If you've ever had to solve a challenging problem in school, you must have seen first hand the difference between an easy question and a challenging one. For an easy question, the first answer you come up with is usually the right answer. A challenging question takes more work: some trial-and-error, many pages of ideas that look like they might work but don't end up working.

*In short, a task is challenging if you HAVE TO FAIL a couple times before completing the task.*

If you just started learning the guitar, should learning how to play a full song be challenging? If your answer is yes, then expect to fail multiple times before you finally learn it. How about getting a job in a tough economy? If I spent my whole life in the classroom learning classroom-skills on how to pass written examinations and recently ventured into entrepreneurship, should I expect to fail multiple times before succeeding? It's not personal!

Whenever I take on any challenging task, I am going to fail over and over again and if I stick with it, learning from my mistakes, I will get better at it. You are going to fail too, and the sooner you learn that it's not personal, the sooner you expect failure, the sooner you start failing faster, the sooner you realize that failures are natural bus stops on the way to success, the more you will succeed.

Let's take a look at Olu's career. Olu started his career in nineteen totipe as a janitor at FFO restaurant. Olu swept and mopped the floor at his scheduled times, and when customers and coworkers would spill food and drinks, Olu would clean it up. Olu progressed from janitor, to gateman, to server, to supervisor, to manager, to restaurant owner, to eventually owning multiple restaurant. What we see when we look into Olu's career's progression is the steadily increasing number of failures.

Olu failed more handling people's schedules, holidays, rush hour, egos and personalities as a supervisor than he did when his only job was keeping the restaurant clean. Olu is failing a lot more now as a business owner now that he has to deal with competition from other restaurants, the brand of his restaurant, some locations making money, some losing money, figuring out with menu items to introduce and a lot more opportunities he now has to fail (compared to when he was a supervisor).

Do we call Olu a failure now because he is failing more often than he ever did in his life? No, we instead call Olu a success. Olu is a success because he is now benefiting from the lessons from his past failures while also pursuing bigger opportunities, hence more failures. He is failing more and succeeding more. Successful people are prolific failers and do not consider themselves failures.

If you are taking on a challenge right now, you will and have probably failed a few times. Did you fail because you are a failure? NO!!! You are taking on a challenging task and you are supposed to fail multiple times before you finally complete it. The more you have to learn, the more you are going to fail. The bigger the challenge, the more you are supposed to fail.

It's nothing personal; remember our definition of a challenging task. The higher your goal, the more failure bus stops you will have to pass through. Take on bigger challenges, expect failure, don't take it personal, learn from it, try again, fail differently, learn from that too, and keep trying till you get to your destination.

So, have you failed lately? What are you waiting for? Its time to start learning, it's time to start taking on challenges, it's time to start failing. Happy failing!