We fail so that we can succeed

Have you ever been so afraid of failing at something that you never bothered to try? Why do we let fear of failure stop us from trying? What will happen if we fail? How will we feel if we don't try? What will happen if we succeed? Is the reward worthwhile? Can we afford to avoid failure? What is life if we only attempt those things at which we know we will succeed? What is success without failure?

These are the questions filling my mind after re-watching JK Rowling's talk on the fringe benefits of failure. I am particularly interested in the question about whether or not we can afford to avoid failure. Rowling talks about the benefits that she received as part of failure, one of which being the stripping away of the inessential. Failure was so uncomfortable and unpleasant it forced her to succeed. It seemed that she could not let failure be the end of the road for her. Success was the end and if she failed than she wasn't done working yet. My successes are more rewarding after having to work hard and overcome the obstacles. I can get the same grade in two classes, get the same grade on two tests, but it is the one which was more difficult for me that gives me the most joy at the end.

I am reminded of a quote from Batman Begins. "Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up." Why do we fail? So that we can succeed. Almost always our failure will show us a weakness that can be strengthened or some way to improve upon our plan, our product, or ourself. The things that we can and should learn from our failures will be invaluable to our successes. We can learn them no other way. The things learned from failure will also be invaluable to us personally as a way to come to know ourselves and understand our humanity.

Getting Started with Sinek and Sivers

It was during the Summer that I first started watching TED talks and this talk by Simon Sinek is one of the first and most influential that I saw. It caused a major paradigm shift for me and began to change how I worked with people and led people. His phrase “people don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it” has shaped the way I approach problems and ideas. Shortly after watching this and learning about the Golden Circle I had a chance to put it into practice. I began developing the idea of using social media, specifically Twitter, within the College Council. I knew that as I was going through this idea I had to articulate why I was doing it and why I was using Twitter instead of Facebook. I started with the what in this case and had to work out the why to see if the what was worth attempting. There was opposition that helped me refine my why/how/what. Once I finally got to the point where I was presenting this idea to the other members I intentionally focused on telling them the why first. This made all the difference. Their reaction was very positive. There was such a difference in their reaction to the Twitter proposal compared with the reaction of our council advisor simply because I started with the why. Focusing on the why also helps me as a leader be open to other ideas. The ‘what’ that I come up with may not be the best one, but that’s okay. It is the why that really matters. The why is the most important part. The why has true impact on people, society, and the world. The what is a mostly vehicle for the why. Derek Sivers: How to start a movement
Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

+TED

This year for the Humanities College Student Council we are primarlily using TED talks as our curriculum instead of some textbook or book on leadership. This was a joint decision Cathryn and I each sort of arrived at independently of each other yet at the same time. I started watching TED talks this Summer and really loved thm. They inspired so many ideas in me and expanded my horizon. As part of our TED curriculum we are to create a personal leadership development blog where we can share our own thoughts on the TED talks and what we are doing in the council. This blog is for our own thoughts and the only limitaion/guideline is that they should be about 150 words in length.