Failure or, The Most Important Advice After ‘Don’t Panic’.
I was recently asked to give some advice to an ad student.
Now, I’ve been asked for advice before, as I’m sure you all have, but in the capacity as a close friend, older brother, casual know-it-all or person mistaken for a 40 year-old who’s passing his prime and full of life wisdom.
Not usually as a professional ad person.
I was more than happy to do it. If it’s one thing that young students need is friendly advice from professionals.
However, in my reply, I skipped across a topic that really needs do be gone over in detail because it happens to be as important for a student to know as a midwife needs to know how to tie a good knot.
I’m talking of failure.
From when we’re kids, it is indoctrinated into us that failure is a bad thing. You’re given bad grades for not doing well, other kids tease you for not being good at football or handball (I think for girls, if you weren’t good at hand games, your life was pretty much over) and sometimes impatient parents would growl you for not doing something right.
This leaves us with one outstanding fact:
Failure sucks.
It sucks to the point where we are cautious about where we tread in most things we do just so we don’t screw up. We’ve become that annoying chess player who keeps his hand on his piece for half an hour before moving it back to it’s original spot.
We really should be doing the exact opposite.
What I did say to this student in regards to failure was
“Welcome rejection and criticism like old friends, because they’ll be visiting often.”
The smilie, I feel, is spot on because failure, like an old friend is someone you learn from and someone that helps you. Sure, you may not always be glad to see them at the time, but at the end of the day, you’re glad they were around.
Failure is how we grow as entrepreneurs, as creatives, as tradesmen, as parents, as friends, as people. You know, learning from our mistakes and that.
I guess that’s another great thing about learning from failure, is that you’re more motivated not to repeat a failure than you are to repeat a success.
It is failure that motivates us to improve ourselves and succeed next time.
Two non-advertising examples can be found in this very blog. Because of past failures, I’m now very careful about where I make out with girls and I will never look a mall kiosk salesperson in the eye again. Dumb examples, perhaps. But I’m not the one getting robbed from the back seat of a car or spending hundreds of dollars on beauty products I’ll never use anymore.
Most of us are scared to fail, even young people like students and juniors. If anything, it’s students and juniors that shouldn’t be afraid of it at all. When you’re young, most older, weathered people look down upon you and expect you to fail due to your lack of experience. Failing while you’re young is forgivable; it’s an invitation for guidance, waiting until you’re old to start failing gets you fired. So shit, you may as well!
Take advantage of this and go for those weird ideas that you’re not sure about, feel that twang of unease and unsureness; take a leap onto that big, soft, cushiony bed, knowing that at any second, it may turn into a solid slab of cold concrete.
Many CDs have said they love working with students and juniors because they have an ignorance about what you can and can’t do, so their thinking is a little less stifled. Fear of failure and rejection will take that edge right away from you.
It really is a shame failure is shunned so early in life; the force of habit makes it hard to let that idea go. But a well-balanced diet of failure in one’s life is very healthy. In fact, it’s essential.
Just ask Michael Jordan. He puts it rather simply.
So when you ask yourself next time:
“But will the client/ boss/ partner/ lecturer/ friend/ investor/ consumer/ director like it, though? Hmmm perhaps not.”
Think again.
“Fuck that.”
Show them what you can do and if you get rejected, show them how you do it better, and better, and better each time.
Because at the end of the day it’s not the failing that those that matter look at. It’s the trying, your effort,
Try, fail and keep going and you’ll succeed eventually; it’s almost mathematical.
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This is dedicated to one-hit-wonder and all the ad students, art students, business students, all the rest students, entrepreneurs, dreamers, workers, people stuck in a rut, industry juniors and the people thinking about the best way to ask that special someone out for a coffee.
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