Processing grief is a tall order as you deal with its terms while a loss resurrects pain, once again. So, for some it’s a weight that can’t be escaped as the cost of a bond takes up more energy: yet, for all its power it can be foiled by time as it matches the leverage of something called failure. In fact, any loss whether large or small can draw a response inversely tied, and it doesn’t need to make sense when life often makes little, at all. It can be a person, of course, or a pet, too, or an item, a flashback, an age or career or a cherished dream or a long-held belief. Regardless, it’s the strength of attachment that drives the sorrow and for some the journey will be swift and brief whilst for others, it’ll take more time.

Meanwhile, failure is effectively a living kind of grief depending on the issue at hand but just as importantly, the make up of a person will decide how it ends. So, we can all react differently to the same thing meaning an impact while relative is functional in nature as we relate to the thing that we’ve lost. At the same time, the quick learners try again on realising their mistakes in addition to the taste of losing, but the repeaters and offenders get worse over time as blindness wills them on. It’s denial, of course, and it’ll never set them straight as society pays dues owed and written by an ego.

‘In the past decade, a wealth of psychological research has shown that most people struggle to handle failure constructively. Instead, we find ways to devalue the task at which we failed, meaning that we may be less motivated to persevere and reach our goal. This phenomenon is known as the “sour-grape effect”. Alternatively, we may simply fail to notice our errors and blithely continue as if nothing has happened, something that prevents us from learning a better strategy to improve our performance in the future.’

David Robson, BBC Features Correspondent

Well, the alternative is something called introspection and it can be found under various names. Feedback; reflection; criticism or analysis; input; evaluation; review or appraisal. However it comes, it can be a fine line between wheeling away from a bulging net to embrace your teammates in a celebration or standing forlorn as a better way of doing things bolts like a horse, through your mind. Yet, some people say, the act of failing isn’t always a bad thing which is true when you look at the life of an inventor and where the merits of utility rest on chances that are monetary, timebound and opportunistic.

In 2011, Amy C. Edmondson, an author and professor of leadership and management at the Harvard Business School wrote, in the business review:

‘First, failure is not always bad. In organisational life it is sometimes bad, sometimes inevitable, and sometimes even good. Second, learning from organisational failure is anything but straightforward. The attitudes and activities required to effectively detect and analyze failures are in short supply in most companies, and the need for context-specific learning strategies is underappreciated … That means jettisoning old cultural beliefs and stereotypical notions of success and embracing failure’s lessons.’

Very true and one person’s drink is someone else’s poison as they say, meaning the learning curve differs in places. So, a Formula One team, specifically, and a strategy engineer have limited time to recognise and implement crucial changes in and between races as opposed to an engineering company able to test and re-test, over longer periods of time. Even so, in both cases failure can rack up into millions of pounds taking costs well into the stratosphere and that’s a level of losing most will never know. It’s the same in the film and television industry, where having your name linked to a sinking stone is as good as Dracula’s kiss of death.

‘Based on previous studies conducted in the Danish film and television industries, the chapter [of this book] outlines the main challenges related to pursuing this line of research. Some of these challenges relate to getting access to studying problematic or failed processes and productions. Moreover, time is crucial to consider when studying precarious, high risk and ‘nobody knows’ industries where practitioners are naturally hesitant to be connected with any kind of failure. The chapter offers examples of what can be learned from studying different kinds of failure.’

E.N Redvell, ‘Failure Studies’

The DNA of failure can be found everywhere and in comparing approaches that are structurally different, the motives are clear when it comes to humility.

So, what of the everyday failures piling up around us? Is your relationship, for example, struggling on its knees or are you sliding ever more towards the exit of a career? More importantly perhaps, were there any or many warning signs? Well, it seems we’re fairly good at inventing all sorts of narratives, many of which are designed to ease the pain of rejection. So, a Norwegian study, in 2020, found that in the event of initial failure, people (in the United States and Scandinavia) were more inclined to diminish the value of a future goal.  Dubbed the ‘sour-grapes effect’, it suggests that failure in some capacity skewers the idea of overall worth, even if it’s detrimental to you. The human mind is amazing.

Still, part of the problem with failure is that it rises from the ashes of expectation, which the ‘sour-grapes effect’ reflects. So, whether fuelled by our early dreams, the romantic industrial complex or our nurturing: we walk a tightrope in balancing hope and fear. Yet, if we’ve experienced a type of emotional modelling that says, yes, the world is unpredictable but also, it’s mostly manageable (depending, on where you live) then we’re set up to deal with life and defeat, quite well. Similarly, if we’ve been taught that there are many ways to interact with people beyond the limits of zero-sum, maybe it sets us up to handle future rejection in a healthy way, too. Put another way, a sense of expectation about the world or what we mistakenly think we’re owed, is our responsibility.

Equally, the stigma of failure in manifest form or even just the fear of it, is the real issue for many people when it comes to the chaos we see around us. It’s not news, of course, but for those sprinting from one mess to another – at home, work or anywhere else: how do you stop and take stock? How do you ask yourself not only the hard questions; how do you accept the tricky answers? Are you, for instance, in a state of rejection right now? How, do you feel? Was it, your fault? If so, can you tolerate it? If not, can you bear it, too? There are many ways to process life but hiding from yourself is least effective of all. Meanwhile, between those huge collapsible columns lie all the micro-failures, as well. The moments in a day that you’ll spend hours over as you replay things into a sense of futility that eventually makes its way into a narrative of vanity and inadequacy, too.

To the point that there are so many quotes on failure: you can only fail to get through them all, yet some of the best are worth remembering:

‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’

Thomas Edison

‘You are going to fail. Many times. So fail fast and learn fast.’

Unknown

‘My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure?’

Abraham Lincoln

Arguably, the grandest and possibly finest quote of all time comes from Theodore Roosevelt, who talked about the ‘Battle of Life’:

‘It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust, sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.’

Part of a speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, 23^rd April 1910

Naturally, feeling inadequate is a gender-neutral thing but is it the case that men and women experience failure differently? A study published in 2022, looked at the widespread idea of boys inherently beating girls when it comes to talent. In what was a truly comprehensive sample of over half-a-million people across 72 countries: ‘The Stereotype That Girls Lack Talent: A Worldwide Investigation’ revealed that when it comes to failure, females often blame themselves in contrast to males who look for external factors, to account for their feelings. Women might be smiling at this point and it’s hard to argue when we’ve done it or heard it.

Meanwhile, the Driving Instructors Association in the UK picked up on the same study and published an article in which, they noted:

‘The questions in the survey were designed to measure the students’ attitudes towards competition, self-confidence and future careers. One of the questions included in the survey was: “When I am failing, I am afraid that I might not have enough talent.”

The results of the survey revealed that female participants were much more likely than males to focus on a lack of talent when they failed academically, even when they performed equally. On the other hand, male participants were more likely than females to attribute failure to external factors, such as bad luck.’

In covering 80% of the global economy, the source of the study was the Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA 2018, published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD.

Clearly, the report begs questions like why do males respond to failure in this way and how do failure and masculinity, interact with one another? They answer each other, of course, and written into our myths and popular culture are a host of other clues, too.

A man’s internal dealings with masculinity and failure may be complex and they often begin early, as we watch our heroes perform feats on a screen that leave us open-mouthed. In fact, after Sylvester Stallone ran as he carried and punched with bricks and then leapt off the floor, with one-handed press ups: many boys in the early 1980s suddenly wanted to work out. Sadly, depending on your outlook, most weren’t allowed to punch huge slabs of raw meat bare-fisted but gagging on raw eggs in a glass, certainly took place. So, perhaps it dawned on scores of young males that if being an Alpha was a stretch too far then preparing to be one, through physical training was an outlet of sorts. A channel, no less, for insecurity and poor self-imagery perhaps, alongside genuinely wanting to be fit.

It’s what we’ve been fed for quite some time and it’s how we’re socialised. Boys don’t cry and girls don’t vie – neither of which are true and the following study: ‘Gender Differences in Emotional Regulation‘ looked for disparities, in the emotional restraint of males and females. What they found was interesting in that men, it seems, lean more towards automatic regulatory processes like control of the amygdala whereas women use more consciously thought-out mechanisms. Of course, it’s easy to see how a prima facie impression arises of men managing their emotions more effectively than women, and it’s a complex area of study, too, requiring more time and energy.

So what happens then, when we’re faced with the imminent prospect of failure?

Well, not everyone, male or female, wants to look this in the eye which can dial up our anxiety. Yet, an ego will usually ride to the rescue as the shadow of failure looms, leaving us blind to the toxicity as we carve a narrative to suit us. Some more than others as the 2022 study shows but when a certain sense of fragility is looking after a man or woman: reacting to failure is the difference between implosion or a reckoning.

‘As we age, we change – we mature, redefine ourselves, and determine who we want to be. Typically, this is an ongoing and slow process. There are some events, however, that force change and make us think and redefine who we are very quickly. This process can be uncomfortable and, for some people, very difficult.’

Dr Kurt Smith, The Good Men Project     

Without a doubt, failure can turn you into a mess with no idea as to who you are or what you’re about. It can leave you wandering from job to job or partner to partner as you try and cling to something, anything, that helps to make sense. It’s terrifying, too, as the sight of others moving through the stages of life reflects a stagnation you’re bound to. How you repair this is personal and in some ways brutal where the need for a board meeting inside your head takes no prisoners, as voting against you is actually for you. It’s a bloodless coup if you keep from struggling but the ‘d’ in death or indeed d’etat is never far, if that’s where you’re at.

At times, we’ll wrestle with the same issues in trying to ward off failure while paying homage to the gods of success, in our own particular way. So, it stands that if you’ve repeatedly tried to achieve with intensity but failed with critical outcomes: the stigma, guilt and shame can push you into scenarios where you’re trying to play out a different ending. That’s the power of failure. It’s driven armies, innovation and personal ambition while driving Earth forward in its transit until one day, not soon, our own sun will then fail. It’s true, a fizzle underplays a celestial outage and if you’re unlucky enough to be here for that singular event: all the failures in history will pail by comparison.        

‘Losing a tennis match isn’t failure, it’s research’

Billie Jean King, 39 Grand Slam titles

If failure hasn’t put you on to the street or behind bars or arguably worst of all, six feet under, let it be just that: research to guide you in your next attempt.

Copyright © 2024 | recoveryourwellbeing.com | All Rights Reserved

Images:

Failing, by Vdnhieu, Pixabay – Main Image
Frustrated Tantrum, by Shvets Production, Pexels
Fail Your Way To Success, by Brett Jordan, Pexels
Paris Train Crash, by Pixabay

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