A Belgian rugby team, Soignies, suffered a record-breaking defeat yesterday, when they were beaten 356-3 by their rivals Royal Kituro. On average, Royal Kituro scored four points a minute. This was an astonishing loss, but, for various reasons, it was understandable. The referee failed to turn up for more than an hour after the scheduled kick-off, so most of the Soignies team had gone home by the time it started, assuming the game was off. Then, when the referee did show, the few players still present showed little or no opposition, apparently playing simply to gain the “loser’s point” rather than to forfeit the match and earn no points at all.
Soignies are now trying to have the result annulled, but their experience raises interesting questions about how one weathers a major failure. What happens when you suffer a defeat that can’t be explained away, or corrected after the fact? Failing is so common, but we tend either to avoid talking about it, or to relegate it to joke status. I think that’s a big mistake.
If the question of when you last failed at something distresses or embarrasses you, that is a worrying sign. Failure means you have courage. It means you want to learn new things. It means you dared to take a risk. In truth, failure builds self-confidence far more powerfully than success.
My clinics are full these days – more so than I’ve ever known them to be – of people who tell me they’re failures. They say they’ve not lived up to expectations.
They report that they’ve let themselves down, or someone they care about. They say they’re not coping like everyone else copes. And yet, when we take a careful look at the assumptions that lie behind their beliefs, we find that they’re based mostly on guesswork rather than knowledge, on partial information rather than a balanced picture, and on a need to please others rather than themselves. Why have we come to think in these unhelpful ways? There are, I think, five reasons.
1. We define ourselves by outcomes
“What do you do?” is the usual opening question in an initial encounter, instead of, “How would you describe yourself?” From cradle to grave, we look only at outcomes, at what we’ve accomplished or are intending to accomplish, rather than at what really matters in life – what we love and how we go about trying to enjoy what we love, and what comes out of that. Our current education system totally reinforces this unhappy attitude, focusing as it does entirely on results rather than on the joy of learning. And it’s no different when we start work. “How much do you earn?” “When’s your next promotion?” Much better would be to ask, “What do you enjoy most about your work?” or “What do you feel are your strengths?”
2. We were raised to focus on success
As a child, you were probably praised more for your successes than for the effort you put in. Yet whether or not you succeeded depended on a number of things that were not in your control – the timing of the race or exam, who else participated, etc. How hard you tried, and whether you kept trying, however, was – and is – totally in your control. If we want to help our children cope more adaptively with failure, we need to praise them for how hard they try, much more so than for the grade they’re awarded or the order in which they finish the race.
3. We’re not selfish enough
In order to succeed, you have to stick with and practice and fail at something many, many times first. For that level of perseverance, you have to love what you’re doing. If you really want to pick yourself up, failure after failure, and not waver until you succeed, then you must listen to your heart more than to what you think other people expect of you.
4. We think we can set the future
Yet another reason why we have so much trouble dealing with failure is because of our misconception about the future. We assume that the future is controllable, that we can set a goal and then simply achieve it. If so, life would be very dull indeed. Setting a goal should be more like making a hypothesis – hopefully, it will be modified and improved many times along the way. You want to become a doctor? If that guess is correct, you’ll love the work enough to push through the setbacks, the late nights and the disappointments. But somewhere along the way, you may find that what you loved about becoming a doctor was actually a love of biology, and what you really want is to become a botanist or a zoologist. Or instead of wanting to become a physician, you discover that what excites you most is helping people perform at their best, so, for you, human performance or sports coaching is your field. Failing should be less about failing, and more about teaching you something.
5. Our lives are too isolated
Most of the information we receive is obtained remotely, and when we receive information in this way, we inevitably receive only a small part of the total picture. So, for example, when we watch the Olympics, we see the race, but not the months and years of training that went into preparing for that race. When we watch a film, we see only the successful shots, not the hundreds of takes and retakes. Yet there’s so much more to life than just the finished products. To maintain a realistic view of what success involves, we need to meet up more regularly with people we love and trust, and share experiences honestly – the successes, sure – but also, and more importantly, the failures, for these create the foundation for success. Failures are the building blocks of resilience, inner strength, and self-confidence, even – perhaps especially – when the scoreboard reads 356-3.
