No one succeeds like a former failure.

Learning what not to do can far more valuable that learning what to do to succeed— especially in our fast paced, ever changing contemporary times.

What Differentiates People Who Fail from People who Succeed?

What differentiates truly successful people from the rest of the herd, is that the people who are most successful have a greater capacity for failure. Reading the biographies of the most successful self made people who were or are leaders in the arts, politics or business reveals that before success they were regarded as basically failures, and thought to have little likelihood of success. The lessons learned from their failures proved invaluable to gaining success.

While most people and the educational system in most countries focus on getting good grades and doing well, what students really need to learn – or actually relearn — is how to fail, even how to appreciate failure.

Children are born with deep appreciation and capacity for failing. During the first year of a normal, healthy human’s life the baby fails far more than it succeeds at almost anything she consciously attempts.

There are milestones in a healthy baby’s life are well known. We know approximately when to expect the babe to first roll over, sit up, crawl, say a word, walk, etc. The difference between a baby who learns faster is not necessarily that she is naturally more intelligent or agile. The fast learners are simply more willing and determined to risk and fail more.

When children are allowed to play freely on their own, such as in a playground environment, they generally attempt new activities without fear of failure. In fact, most children are so reckless in how and what they will try that they need constant supervision to keep them from being harmed.

How Education Can Promote a Lack of Success

Prior to the baby boomer generation, which flooded public schools in the United States the emphasis was on learning and demonstrating new scholastic abilities and understandings, not passing tests. This may seem the same as they point in the same direction, but one fails to hit the bull’s eye of achievement.

A school year was divided into A (usually fall-winter) and B (winter-spring) sessions. Students were kept back, promoted or skipped to the next session in all grades when the teacher determined the student had mastered the work. This approach is more based on apprenticeship, where the teacher and even older students serve as masters to emulate. One room schoolhouses used this system.

The apprenticeship mode of learning, which is what a baby has, means that is was safer for a student to experiment or fail as what was eventually necessary was mastering the material not gaining a grade, which would average both the failures and successes.

Beginning with the baby boomer generation, we learned not to fail but to pass tests, which often simply mean regurgitating information back for a test. The test results are prepared to those taken by other students. So, the focus is peer to peer and competitive. Any test that is graded on a curve shows not mastery, but how well the other students did. A student who is barely competent, but scores the highest can reap an “A” when the bell curve is used to score a test.

While competition can be fun and motivate achievement, most learning comes from a simple desire to achieve. From the baby who risks failure time and time again to the physically challenged elderly who wants to master walking independently with a cane, humans are willing to risk failure to gain independence or what is expected to be a better life.

Unfortunately, testing and qualifying based on skills or aptitude became confused with right or wrong. A test answer was “right” or “wrong”, which really meant correct or incorrect. The terms Right and Wrong can have moral implications. So Wrong and Failure became confused. There is nothing intrinsically morally wrong or right with failure or success.

Real Learning = Failure =  Success

Learning can be understood to be synonymous with discovery, invention and creativity.

When Edison invented the light bulb after a thousand failed attempts, he also actually learned how to make light bulbs.

When Columbus discovered America he also learned there was land between Europe and the Far East and charted his discoveries so others could replicate them.

When Pissaro and Monet created a new way of painting by focusing on the light, rather that the subject (such as a landscape) that the light illuminated, they learned a whole new way of painting and fathered Impressionism and Modern Art.

Yet all of these immensely successful people were considered to be failures by themselves and others until their new information was recognized. For most achievements failure, even great failures precede success.

How Vision Ties in with Success

The primary sense of all healthy, sighted normally human beings (including via corrective lenses) is vision. Sixty-five percent of the normal human brain is dedicated to vision. That leaves thirty-five percent to other senses and activities. The majority of people are primarily visual learners.

When we understand something we say phrases like. “I see it”, “I can see your point” or when we cannot agree, “Show me!”

The baby first learning to walk first “sees” the idea of such grand mobility by seeing other humans, both adults and children walking. The baby makes visual connections: their feet look like the baby feet, as do other human hands. The baby understands the theoretical concept of walking, but cannot walk.

The visual lessons learned about space and barriers, such as the rails in the crib or playpen serve the baby in the experience of walking. A not yet walking baby will crawl over to a chair, table or human and pull itself up to the standing position, then take a few steps while holding on to steady herself. The initial attempts to walk are filled with many, even weeks of failure to walk as the baby learns incrementally what works and builds the muscle, hand and leg eye coordination, spatial and muscular memories, etc., that will bring eventual success.

If you have even witnessed a baby who is just learning to walk in her own, then you have seen that the child’s recognition of this early achievement is visual. The baby lets go of its support, takes a few steps and looks around with recognition, and delight dawning that she is unsupported and free. That wonderful surprise may cause her to lose her tenuous balance and fall on her well diapered butt, but she will soon try again with more success.

When adults see a baby take those first steps they almost always smile and encourage the child – even past the point when the baby falls—they always fall. The older humans are focused on the baby’s achievement, not the temporary failure that inevitably follows.

While the first year of a baby’s life is understood to be the year filled with the most growth and development for a human being, if we look at actual achievement—the kind that is measured by tests like survival, human babies are almost utter failures. Unlike other species the average one year old human is barely mobile, cannot feed itself or gain its own food, clean itself, meaningfully interact with its peers or recognize real danger – like fire. Yet given another few years of development and many more failures that baby will grow into a human that will overtake and master the other species with its abilities and skills.

How to Use Failures to Achieve Success

“Never give up, never give up, never give up…” Sir Winston Churchill in a speech during the darkest days in WWII, before the USA joined the war against the Nazis and England was left standing alone.

The difference between remaining a failure and using failure to achieve great success lies in one’s focus. Churchill focused on winning the war. The horrible losses England suffered did not mean the war was lost, just the battles. Churchill refused to give up.

A set back is simply a setback, not the end of a journey. While doing the same thing that failed will not bring success, a new, alternate way can be found, invented or created. Like learning to walk, when enough things that do not work are eliminated, what works will be left.

Success in life is achieved by refusing to give up while finding a new way to achieve one’s goal(s). Most people who “failed”, people we seem to recognize as failures are simply people who gave up. Failure is not an option, but it is a decision of everyone who quits.

A Challenge

I challenge you to join me in failing. Like Edison, Columbus, Pissaro, Monet, Churchill, and most everyone else who achieved something great or their heart’s desire. Dare to fail big, even boisterously in front of everyone you know towards achieving what you want to achieve (this differs sometimes from what others want you to achieve). Be willing to risk failure, then adjust and even fail some more until you achieve your success.

If you can fail and pick yourself up, adjust and give it another wiser go, then you have what it takes to succeed.

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Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free copy click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke.

Check out the limited and open edition prints in the estore.
Follow her on Twitter at @judyrey .]