What Does it Takes to Be a Good Failure?

¶ … Failure?

At one point or another in everyone's lives, they have probably felt like a failure. However, not everyone deals with failure in the same way. Some people take failure so harshly that they become suicidal. Others become isolated or depressed. Many realize that failure is a fact of life and bounce back relatively quickly, making the choice to use failure to create something good.

When Sergio Zyman, an executive with Coca-Cola, made the mistake of taking Coke off the market and replacing it with New Coke, it was a total failure and an extremely public one at that (The Recovery Times, 1995). Zyman was basically driven out of the company because of his failure.

However, while many people would have felt like crawling under a rock, Zyman refused to let failure get the better of him. He created his own consulting firm and was soon hired back by Coca-Cola. Zyman is an excellent example of a good failure.

As a 19-year-old student, I have already experienced many failures in my life, ranging from poor grades in school to not making the final cut on a sports team. However, I've never let these failures get the best of me, as I realize that I am young and still have the chance to make the best of the situation and learn from my mistakes.

Failure is simply a way of life and, when combined with a positive attitude, can be an effective learning tool. Many of the world's greatest inventors failed countless times before inventing some of today's most remarkable products.

According to philosopher Philip Dziuk (2002), if an individual has not experienced a good failure lately, recovered from the failure and learned something from it, he or she is not on the right path to success. "If you play your cards so close to your chest that you never or rarely make a mistake then you're unlikely to get anyplace let alone win," says Dziuk.

According to Dziuk, nearly every successful millionaire has had at least one bankruptcy. Every successful researcher and teacher has experienced many failures, ranging from rejected manuscripts to unfounded grants.

While these are not the incidents that successful people boast of, they certainly learned from them. Dziuk says that the best way to come up with a good idea is to have lots of them and try them out.

It is comforting to me to realize that everyone experiences failure. I have blamed others for my failures and even given up on projects because of failure. However, when I realize that Einstein failed hundreds of times before he invented the light bulb, it makes me feel that failures truly should be viewed as learning experiences.

In my opinion, a good failure is one that attempts to do things that others may not have considered. Often they fail and this failure should be viewed as a temporary setback and a challenge to the learning process. Good failures tolerate failure and the agony it produces. They understand that only those who are willing to take risks achieve great success.

According to reporter Anna Navarro (2002), "failure is part of everyone's repertoire." Navarro points out that good failures have the ability to admit mistakes, learn from them and move on. Bad failures, on the other hand, have the tendency to place blame, create excuses and refuse to learn from the situation.

Navarro uses the example of Peter, a man who accepts a promotion despite the fact that he had serious doubts about the character of his future boss, to exemplify how to be a good failure.

Peter accepted the promotion because it was a great opportunity, even though his gut feeling told him that his working with his future boss would be a nightmare. When Peter's boss proved to be even worse than he imagined, the next three years of Peter's career were miserable.

At first, Peter reacted by blaming himself for the situation, denying the problem, or having too few skills for the job. Finally, he admitted his mistake, started a new job hunt and developed a strategy for dealing with his boss' negativity.

Peter soon found a comparable job, even though he had to relocate. According to Navarro, Peter "managed to turn a bad mistake into a good failure." good failure has many characteristics, including a good attitude. When one fails, Positive thinking is the best solution. As long as an individual can draw useful lessons from failure, then failure can be a positive thing.

A good failure sees failure as a valuable learning tool, rather than a great setback. While it is normal to react to failure with blame or depression, this is not a good way to handle failure. A good failure understands that when they accept responsibility and refuse to let failure get them down, they are able to figure out what went wrong and bounce back from their failure.