Common Myths About Failure

As the author of a book about overcoming failure, titled The Secret to Success is Not a Secret: Stories of Famous People Who Persevered, I have become an expert on the subject. Actually, I had enough experience in failure before I had written the book to be an expert; the book gives me more prestige.

Failure is a bad thing.

Captain Edward John Smith had a perfect record at White Star Line. He had never had one accident in forty-six years of service. In his own words, "I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort." One might consider this a good quality in a captain. Certainly, White Star did since Smith was often hired to take the company's new ships out on their maiden voyage. He was set to retire but decided to take one last ship on her maiden voyage: The Titanic. Many experts claim that if Smith had more experience in how to handle a disaster, more lives would have been saved. "A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner." Anonymous

Failure teaches us how to handle adversity and conflict. No one enjoys failing, but it is a part of life we need to deal with if we want to succeed. More than that, we need to learn from our failures. A wise man knows that you learn more from failure than from success.

"It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure." Bill Gates.

Failure is always a step backwards.

Sometimes failure can actually be a step forward and not a back. A young director learned this lesson on one of his first movies. The star of the movie, nicknamed Bruce, refused to work. Over budget and out of time, the director had figure away around it. First, he used the time to perfect every scene that did not contain Bruce. When that was done, he figured out ways to film around Bruce and hired John Williams to write a score that would suggest that the star was on screen, even when he was not. Did it work? You be the judge: the movie is Jaws and the director is Steven Spielberg. In the end, Spielberg's failure ended up helping him more than it hurt him.

"Failures are steps in the ladder of success." James Allen

Failure is an ending.

Failure is only an ending if you stop trying. When you fail, it is a sign that you need either to try harder or to shift directions. Michael Jordan was cut from his basketball team twice when he was in high school. Each failure convinced him to work harder at achieving his goal

"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."Thomas Alva Edison

Julie Andrews, by all accounts, did a brilliant job of portraying Eliza Doolittle in the production of My Fair Lady. Andrews received critical acclaim and a Tony Award nomination for her performance and the musical was successful in New York and London. Producer Jack Warner, however, did not believe that Andrews could successfully portray the role on the big screen. When it came time to cast the movie, Warner decided he wanted someone famous and gave the part to Audrey Hepburn. Now free to accept other roles, Andrews went on to star in Mary Poppins. When Oscar time came around in 1964, My Fair Lady might have won Best Picture, but the Best Actress Academy Award went to Andrews. Audrey Hepburn was not even nominated.

"Perseverance is failing nineteen times and succeeding the twentieth." Julie Andrews

If you do everything right, you will always succeed.

After a corporate buyout of Handy Dan Home Improvement Center left Bernard Marcus and Arthur Blank unemployed, they decided to team up with another Handy Dan employee, Ronald Brill, and open their own home improvement store. It was not initially successful. Their first three stores in Atlanta lost almost a million dollars the first year. The second year they earned a profit and went public their third year. By 1998, over 750 Home Depot stores were in operation with total annual sales of over thirty billion dollars. Home Depot has been named Fortune Magazine's "Most Admired Retailer" for five consecutive years. And Handy Dan? Its doors closed for a final time years ago.

"It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." Franklin D. Roosevelt

The experts are always right.

Eleanor Bergstein spent ten years knocking on studio doors in Hollywood before she finally found a studio willing to make her film. Vestron Pictures was a relatively new studio and gave the movie a shoestring budget of about five million dollars. They may have agreed to make the film, but they did not agree to like it. "Even when we were making the movie [the producers] were telling me how terrible it was," Bergstein said. When it was done, the producers were advised it would be more profitable if they burned the negative and collected the insurance money. They disregarded this advice and the movie was released. Dirty Dancing became the fifth-highest grossing film of 1987 and earned over $170 million worldwide, landing it in the top ten most profitable movies to date.

"The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it-so fine that we often are on the line and do not know it." Ralph Waldo Emerson

J.K. Rowling's agent sent her first manuscript out to twelve different publishers, but each of them rejected it. He tried other publishers, and finally, Bloomsbury was willing to publish it. Rowling was given an advance only three thousand dollars and warned by the head of children's fiction that there was no financial reward in children's books. In 2004, Forbes magazine estimated that she had earned over one billion dollars from her books, making her the first person ever to become a billionaire as a writer. In 2006, Forbes placed her as the second richest woman entertainer in the world, right behind Oprah Winfrey.

"Failure is an event, never a person; an attitude, not an outcome." Zig Ziglar

We become the person we are today by how we deal with the failures in our life. Identifying that failure is only a temporary state and not a permanent one is what will make us persevere overall obstacles and critics. Rather than be ashamed of our failures, we should embrace them as necessary rungs on the ladder of success.

I have been a failure and I will be a failure in the future, but that does not make me a failure. I will never be a failure unless I choose to be one.