Failure – An Option

You all must have heard that failure is very important for success. It means you tried, learned and now it is the time to try again. On the contrary there is another success mantra which says “Failure is not an option.” It is a very powerful statement to make, it boosts the morale of people. Hence, used by the leaders or the managers to motivate their team members. We will be talking about the much boasted statement – “Failure is not an option”, or to be more precise – “if failure is not an option, what is it?”

The statement was coined by a member of “Apollo 13” mission control crew and later used as the title of a documentary on the US space program. Is it justifiable to use it everywhere? My answer would be “NO”, it is too powerful and vague, it could be suitable only in a few cases – like on a battlefield, where lives are at stake. We usually have two options – success or failure, two sides of a same coin. That makes failure a worthy competitor to success, with exactly 50% probability. We take it as an offense, while it is the rule of nature.

Playing safe is not an option. We know “greater the risk, greater the return” and if failure is not an option, that means we have to succeed all the time. We can’t take risks or try something new, as we know for the fact that there is only 50% chance of success. What suffers is our ability to learn from failures, which further reduces this probability.

Idea of failure

If we search “success” on “Amazon.com” (which is arguably the largest online bookstore in the world) we get 226,000+ books. Now let us change the keyword to “failure” and the result would be only around 22,000 books. It clearly shows how much obsessed we are with success that we forget that failure is also an option.

While most of these are self-help books that sells success as something that can never be lost. When we read the biographies of people who are undeniably successful, they create an entirely different picture. They tell that success goes hand in hand with risk, and episodic failure is part of it. Like success doesn’t call us to stop, how can you expect failure to not act same as its twin? It doesn’t say “it’s over”, it says “let’s try again” with better probability of success.

If we accept failure, we understand the best way to learn is to take risks. A baby understands it better than us, when he wants to move he moves. Initially he have trouble moving, he fails repeatedly. Eventually, he learns a better way and succeed. Our job here is to let him fail without shame or rebuke.

You must embrace and adopt failure and give it its long overdue recognition. It is something to be celebrated as an achievement, a part of your résumé, a reminder of success that is other way round.

Is failure desirable?

NO – What?
Yes, you read it right; it is an option but not something desirable. It is like a medicine, or a critic, or a strict coach, or a harsh teacher. None desirable, but when it has a role to play it has to be acknowledged. You don’t have to always fail to succeed, or fall ill to be healthy. Failure is basically an antidote to arrogance or exaggerated self-confidence. When Steve Jobs was fired from Apple it was like a brick hitting his head. He later said it was “awful tasting medicine, but the patient needed it.” It was a failure, which laid the foundation stone for the success of Pixar and was responsible for Apple’s future turnaround.

Do everything in your power to be successful at whatever you do. Don’t let the occasional failures be your reality. Let it be there enjoying its fame being a healer or a trainer, the end result will be your reality – A perfect dish with a perfect blend of “failures”. If you fail, just learn from it.