For many of the teachers engaging in activities designed to liberate from fear of failure and the myth that failure is something to be avoided, creating a culture of embracing failure (starting with yourself) was the main goal.
What does this mean ... personally?
The first huge obstacle we tackled was to reassess what failure actually means to us personally - is it really 'bad'? Do we really want to avoid it (even though that would be an impossibility)? As a class participant says, "Failure hurts inside more than anywhere." And what we want to suggest through the activities of the class is:
"... if you let it."
It's a matter of perspective, and far too many of us choose to view failure as 'bad' and choose to reinforce a self-damaging view of ourselves in the process.
But it doesn't need to be that way. Failing can be seen as a creative opportunity; if you don't fail, you won't get the creative opportunity. As another class participant explains: "Using the word "failure" so much is probably doing more harm than good. These are just ideas that weren't completely successful, just part of a learning experience." For this reason, I see an increasing trend around referring to this experience as 'failing forward' or 'positive failure'. I first heard of these terms from Alastair Arnott (international speaker and author of "Positive Failure") who joined me for a conversation to help explore what it means to fail forward and why it's important. Alastair came back for another conversation, joining us Jack Matson (Professor Emeritus, author of "Innovate or Die" and person who coined "Intelligent Fast Failure") for a lively Google Hangout with the team about failure. Since launching the class, I like exploring the idea of failure as two sides of the same coin: Failure <---> Creative Opportunity. It's all the same thing - it just depends on how you look at it and how you practice it.
During the week, we also had a chance to contemplate 'growth mindset', which has everything to do with your own personal perspective on things. If you fear failure, you will not have the bounce needed to get back up from it and make something of it. Acknowledging this was the first step. Doing it was the next step.
Take Action
As with every other module in the class, week four embodied the idea of taking stock intellectually and emotionally, and then lining up our behavior by taking some sort of action so that we can practice the creative habit of the week.
If you don't put yourself into it, you don't get yourself out of it.
So, class participants spent the rest of the week putting themselves into it by practicing failure. They chose from exercises from three categories where failure could feel like a trap to many people:
- taking new action: practicing in this area helps realize the power of taking risks and challenging limiting mindsets.
- making something, figuring something out with many tries: practicing in this area helps build resilience, immersion and curiosity.
- communication (with ourselves and with other people): practicing in this area helps build personal empowerment and group culture.
Reading the course content and watching the videos is one thing, actually doing the failing is another. That's when the reality of what you think about failing really surfaces:
"...reflecting back to the process of completing these tasks I noticed that I tried to find safety in the 'failure' activity...I noticed I asked myself, "which one of these failure activities will I be the most successful at?" I am a perfectionist and failing is not something I connect with - after this course it has illuminated the need for accepting failure."
- Class Participant
We asked participants: "What are some observations you made about yourself when you exposed yourself to failure?" and here's what we found:
"I have more freedom than I have let myself believe."
- Class Participant