WHY THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FAILURE
“It is better to have tried and failed, than never to have tried at all.”
- Goldy Hyder (President & CEO, Business Council of Canada)
This is the best piece of advice I was ever given. I was 16 years old, on the verge of tears on a ski slope somewhere in British Columbia, Canada and it has stuck with me ever since.
After a particularly disastrous attempt on the beginners’ run I decided I hated skiing because I couldn’t do it and kept falling over whilst 3 year olds went whizzing by (with no poles!) having the time of their lives. I was angry and frustrated and refused to go back up the mountain where I would only be subjected to more embarrassment and humiliation.
Awakening VI - 60x80cm, mixed media on canvas
The dispenser of the golden nugget of wisdom above is now one of the most successful people I know. Given his professional position as head of the BCC and now mine as an ‘artpreneur’ it seems fitting and still so relevant. Oh, and he also happens to be my cousin.
Fear of failure held me back for many, many years and when my marriage ended it was no longer just a fear. I blamed myself. I had a ‘failed’ marriage, ergo, I was a failure. But, Goldy’s words kept coming back to me and slowly I began to realise that this wasn’t the case. I hadn’t failed at all, some things just don’t work out. We gave it a go but maybe somewhere deep down I knew that marriage, with all its stigma, just wasn’t part of my journey at that time. I am pretty sure I wouldn’t be living my dream life as an artist today if we had stayed together.
Now I believe that really there is no such thing as failure, only lessons to be learnt. The Universe usually has a better plan for us than the ones we have for ourselves and we have to learn about ourselves in order to see it. Sometimes it takes several attempts to get it right.
Colonel Sanders’ famous chicken recipe was rejected 1009 times before being accepted, Henry Ford’s first company went bankrupt, Oprah Winfrey was told she was ‘unfit for TV’ and Thomas Edison made over 10,000 attempts to invent a commercially viable electric lightbulb before getting it right.
Over the last 10 years or so I have tried various different creative career paths en route to finding my passion. I started designing and making my own range of Indian-inspired homewares but gave up when I realised I really only enjoyed the designing bit and wasn’t very good at actual business. I thought my love for interiors would set me on my true path: I got a coveted position as an intern at Living Etc but quit after 3 days because I hated being in a 9-5 office environment. I spent years as an assistant stylist before going it alone only to conclude that, although I did really love it, I loved working in real properties more. I tried colour consulting and home staging in an attempt to pacify this yearning but again, even though I thoroughly enjoy it I still felt there was something else that I was meant to be doing. It was home staging that I led me to my ‘aha’ moment.
“We must try different avenues and know that if it doesn’t work out it is not because we are failures but because we have something to learn.”
The point I am making here is that perseverance and the willingness to explore, along with a little nudge in the right direction from the Universe every now and then, is the key to success. We must try different avenues and know that if it doesn’t work out it is not because we are failures but because we have something to learn that will then get us to where we’re meant to be. I didn’t fail at marriage or any of the vocations mentioned above, rather I had succeeded in determining what wasn’t right for me. Choosing to see the positive side when something doesn’t turn out how we want or expect it to can help us figure out our true purpose. So really the quote should read “it is better to have tried and learnt lessons along the way, than never to have tried at all.”
For the record, I did go back up the mountain that day in 1993 and every day for the rest of our holiday.
I haven’t ski’d since.
Kx