Did You Just Fail? You Lucky Bastard!

You failed. Again. You look at the floor embarrassed and wonder how to explain your failure. You check your surroundings in the hope of convincing yourself that someone else is to blame. Unfortunately, life is like a game of Golf. You are the one behind the club, and you make the shot. Good or bad, it’s yours. Don MacKay, with whom I spent some fantastic hours on his golf course at Muskoka Highlands, despite having absolutely no idea (or talent) how to play this game, taught me that Golf is the only sport where you can’t blame anyone else for your shot. And if you cheat, the only one you are cheating is yourself. In life, it is the same. Failure is yours and yours alone. There is no one else to blame but yourself. Are you ashamed?

Well, should you?

Failure is as natural as destroying your toilet bowl after a gluttonous night with spicy tacos. Failure is essential when it comes to your business. There is nothing better for your establishment than a severe mistake, total failure, and even bankruptcy. Failure is wonderful.

At this point, you’re probably asking yourself, and rightfully so, “Who the hell is this crazy bastard telling me how wonderful it is that I failed? He hasn’t walked a mile in my shoes and has no clue what I’ve been through” Oh, but I have. The difference though is the colour of my shoes are different and the road not the same.

I am a failure. Complete and absolute. I’ve made more mistakes than Harvey Weinstein’s indecent suggestions. I have more failures than the freckles on Morgan Freeman’s face. I lost more money than Charlie Sheen has snorted. However, the fact that I have failed does not mean that I am a loser. A loser is one who gives up after failing. The loser does not learn from the mistakes and does not make a second attempt. The loser simply walks away.

It’s fascinating how we treat failure. When we are babies, and we have our brains yet to fill with knowledge and, more importantly, with experience, we find failure cute and educational. You don’t stop your baby from falling when it stumbles while making its first steps. You don’t stop it from learning from failure. No matter how many times you tell your child not to touch the hot plate, the baby won’t stop reaching until it gets burned.

Experience can neither be taught nor learned. Yes, you may soften the blow or make the experience more accessible to achieve, but one cannot say they have the experience until they have been through it. And making mistakes is usually the first step towards getting that experience.

So before you could walk, you fell countless times. Yet you didn’t quit. Before you could speak, you mumbled to get words to mean something. You produced only unrecognizable sounds as if Rambo with a fat lip was attempting to sing the Ode of Joy in German. Yet you didn’t stop.

Every new skill you acquired through the years, running, riding a bike, skating, having sex. Everything you can do now, on your first attempt, was either a failure or it was a fluke.

A perfect example of the adult state of mind is when on “The Simpsons,” Bart and Lisa audition to become Mr. Burns’ heirs. They fail and are visibly upset. At this moment, Homer gives them one of his best lines ever: “Kids, you tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.” Well, Bart doesn’t give up. As only he can, he tries again by destroying Mr. Burns’s property and gets the old man to name him his heir.

So why do you think your first attempt at being an entrepreneur starting your business will go smoothly? You are bound to fail at every step. Ever wondered why the Apollo 11 mission landed on the moon? No, it’s not because of a sick naming convention system, like the one Sony uses for their Xperia Smart Phones. There were 10 failed attempts to reach the moon before they did it. Can you imagine if they quit after the USSR sent the first man into space? Can you imagine what the world would be like if they stopped after the fire aboard Apollo 1?

Can you imagine if the Joker abandoned his evil scheme the first time Batman stopped him? But he didn’t, and he wreaked havoc on Gotham City and killed thousands of innocent people. So should you … Well, not the killing and wreaking havoc part, but the not quitting part — for sure.

Failures cause progress. Learning quickly from those failures results in faster progress. As Mario Puzo said through Don Corleone in his immortal book “The Godfather,” “The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.” The fear of failing will only delay success. Failure is the path to growth. And whenever someone says, “You are a failure,” thank them. What they are admitting is that you have much more experience than they do. And it’s a sign that you are that much closer to your goals.

Celebrate your failures and share your failures with others. Have a failure to share? Show some care and share your story.