Go Ahead Then– Fail Again, Fail Better

The living room of my piano teacher was jammed with parents and students sitting quietly, politely, hands folded on their laps, waiting for me to begin. My mom and dad sat in the middle of the room. They had dressed up for the occasion—and my dad had taken off work for the recital. The annual recital was a big deal. It was the culmination of a year of lessons, paid in full. This was the moment to enjoy the returns.

I was twelve years old. I had practiced this piece of music for several months—driving my siblings crazy every evening, going over and over those troublesome measures that always tangled me until they became my strongest part of the music. I knew I was ready.

I looked out nervously at all the parents, nodding at me with assurance, especially mom and dad. I lifted my hands, brought them down and played the first few measures of music. Then, the thing I was most afraid of happened. My mind could not retrieve anything—nothing! It was as if someone had turned off the lights in my brain. I tried to continue to play a few notes, but only a third of them were even close. I tried starting back over, but it was the same. Finally, to spare everyone in the room this awkward embarrassment, I got up, and took a seat at the back of the room. What happened from that moment through the rest of the recital is gone. It was a total black-out moment.

Riding home, I told mom and dad I would never touch a piano again as long as I lived. Dad told me that going blank like that is not uncommon. Even the best artists go blank sometimes. Don’t worry about it.

For some reason, I didn’t quit the piano. I kept showing up for lessons.

A year later, it was time for another recital. This time, the recital would be in my grade school auditorium, and I would be on a stage performing for over fifty people. Again, I knew the music well. It was “The Sound of Music”.

I began the first measure—a slow intro – “My day in the hills, has come to an end, I know…”  and gradually built up to the resounding “The hills are alive, with the sound of music…”

I went on to play the entire piece by heart without a single mistake, rose, took a bow, and listened to the applause bouncing off the auditorium walls.

I have often wondered what the difference between that first recital was and the next. There was a lesson in this experience for me, one that I have held onto for over fifty-five years.

The lesson is this—How I respond when I fail matters greatly. I have had many opportunities to choose this response, and to get better at it.

When we fail, it makes us question everything, right down to the very heart of who we are and why we’ve been put here on this earth. But failure, as much as it hurts, is also a necessary part of life. It’s the pathway to our goals.

How have I failed? Let me count the ways.

I blanked out (again) during a speech in the eighth grade. It didn’t help that my buddies in the back of the room were making faces at me during the speech. But, many years later, I am the keynote speaker at several national safety conferences.

I gave out in the middle of a long-distance track meet run in the ninth grade. Yet, again, many years later, I won my division in the Eugene Marathon.

I took a mountaineering course, which required a number of field trips in the mountains. On one, I drove all the way to Mt. Rainier for the training when I discovered I forgot my boots. I could not make up the class, so did not pass. I also made an attempt to climb Mt. Baker, and failed. A year later a finished the course and the climb, and a few years later climbed Mt Rainier.

I have lost a few jobs but have spent the last twenty-five years in the profession of my choice.

I spent 110 hours studying for a certification exam that would strengthen my career. It was a computerized test that tallied your score immediately. After four and a half hours of questions and math problems, I hit the finish button, and the screen flashed immediately the words “You Have Failed”.  I immediately signed up to take the test again in three months— and passed!

I finally realized it all comes down to being comfortable with taking risks in life. The immense value there is in taking risks in those things I had a desire to do was something that came to me gradually. I first had to experience through friends, family, and through God that I was going to be OK, not matter the outcome of things. With that confidence, I could try new things, things that seemed difficult but worth giving my best try. It took me years to take up running again. It didn’t take but a minute to decide to take the test again. That is the difference that comes from trusting in God, and as a result, in yourself.

There are countless examples of how successful people have endured failure. As a writer, I know about rejection. Getting rejections from magazines and periodicals and publishers is a normal part of the process. If you don’t write, send out, get rejections, and start again, then you are not in the business of writing. I have had a few things published and have even won first place in regional writing contests. But mostly, I have rejection slips—and that is fine with me. I still sit down every day and write—because I love to. I still play music every day, because I love to. I still run and hike, because I love to. Failure will not stop me from doing what I like to do.

Failure is the surest way to get better. I have learned much less from success than I have from failure.  Failure will improve your life. It will allow you to reach new understandings and epiphanies on life, love, business and the people all around you.

To try something is to risk failing. And to fail is the most common experience of being human. When we fail, we reach out our hands to our ancestors, to Adam and Eve who were the first to fail.

J.K. Rowling, the author of the “Harry Potter” series knew firsthand of failure, and she shared her experience with college graduates. “You might never fail on the scale I did,” Rowling told the new graduates. “But it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”

So, how do you handle your times of failure- those times you don’t reach your goal, win the game, strengthen the relationship, get an A or B, or just don’t do as well as you hoped you would? What do you do with that initial feeling of disappointment? What we decide in that pivotal moment can impact our course.

The more I really want to achieve something, the more it hurts when I don’t. But that is good news— for it is those things that you really care about and hurt the most when you don’t succeed, that are especially for you to try again. With each failure, you are one more step towards succeeding.

As the playwright Samuel Becket wrote, “Fail again—Fail Better!”

Kind Regards,

Bob