#139: Is failure such a bad thing?
The Communicate to Influence Blog
Sean Connery is a legend of the silver screen and one of my favourite actors, I think it is fair to say that no-one would consider him a failure. He won an academy award, is widely considered the greatest ever James Bond, and earned over USD 350m during his career starring in blockbusters including The Rock, The Untouchables, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. However, 43 of the 58 movies he made during his career were considered ‘average’ or ‘flops’; that’s 74% of his total output! The total failures (flops) accounted for 29% of all his output.
The lights I want to shine on Connery’s achievements are that (i) people remember your successes not your failures, and (ii) without the failures, the successes wouldn’t exist. If Sean Connery had stopped after his first failure, embarrassed and ashamed as many people feel after a failure in life, there would have been no blockbusters. He would have truly failed.
Every flop or average movie was a step on his path to success. This is a mindset. The fear of failure inhibits success. To quote Michael Jordan, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career, I’ve lost almost 300 games. I’ve failed over and over again in my life”. Every successful person has experienced failure but they keep going, they believe in themselves.
It is important therefor that we are consciously aware of how our self-belief influences us so that we can deal with the inevitability of failure. I will discuss this in the context of three mindsets; Perfectionist, Optimist and Realist.
Perfectionists never feel satisfied with their performance or achievements. They tend to frustrate themselves by setting goals which are unrealistically high and are prone to making harsh judgments against themselves and others when standards are not met. They remove much of the fun from the process for themselves and others.
Most entrepreneurs are optimists. They do the best they can with the materials, skill and time at their disposal and don’t worry beyond that tending to believe everything will work out. How else can you explain sinking a life’s savings into a new venture without having any prior experience of running a company?! Optimists break goals down into small steps so they can enjoy incremental stages of success however, the risk of over-optimism is that long term challenges are often overlooked, increasing the chance of failure.
Enter the realists who relate to goals only in terms of information and facts and focus less on visualization and more on tangible results. Realists will take a more conservative world view and avoid the risks that result in the flops and the average. They are less likely to have the blockbusters.
Which of these types was Sean Connery? I suspect that like most successful people, he exhibited behaviours of all three. A perfectionist when committed to a cause, an optimist at heart but a pragmatic realism entrenched from a tough upbringing which always helped him stay grounded.
More importantly, which are you? Are there elements from one that are holding you back or from others that you aspire to? As always I keep my blog short; just long enough to encourage thought and hopefully give value, but short enough to be a quick read and not impose on your day. Take some time to consider your balance between these three mindsets and how your self-beliefs are impacting your progress positively or negatively. Occassional self-reflection is well worthwhile..!
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