I was planning to go on holiday recently and working hard to get those precious few days off. Then I took the dog for a walk/run - and fell over a tree root in the local woods. I was running quite quickly and was attached to the dog by an extendable lead that accelerated my progress towards the hard forest floor.
As I fell I had visions of hospitals and cancelled vacations. Fortunately I managed to rollover and escape with minor cuts and bruises. I was probably instinctively helped by years of martial arts training when I was younger where you learnt to fall without hurting yourself almost before you learnt how to take down an opponent.
It occurred to me afterwards that "learning to fall" or "learning to fail" is a necessary part of professional working life. It is inevitable that not everything will always go right. It is not the falling or the failure that is the issue. To some extent it is inevitable. It is how we react and recover, avoid being damaged by the fall and also learn from the experience that really matters.
Many very successful people failed first, often a number of times, before achieving great things. At Fred Astaire's first screen test the casting director concluded "Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Not Handsome. Can dance a little." Steven Spielberg was rejected by the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts multiple times. After Harrison Ford's first small movie role, an executive took him into his office and told him he'd never succeed in the movie business!
I found this great quote in an article by Michael Michalko, an expert on creative thinking: "Failure is only a word that human beings use to judge a given situation. Instead of fearing failure, we should learn that failures, mistakes and errors are the way we learn and the way we grow. Many of the world's greatest successes have learned how to fail their way to success."
Admittedly not all of this passed through my mind as I tumbled to the ground, but it did make me think and eventually to write this blog. The dog by the way hardly seemed to be bothered or even to notice my fall from grace - the faithless creature!
As I fell I had visions of hospitals and cancelled vacations. Fortunately I managed to rollover and escape with minor cuts and bruises. I was probably instinctively helped by years of martial arts training when I was younger where you learnt to fall without hurting yourself almost before you learnt how to take down an opponent.
It occurred to me afterwards that "learning to fall" or "learning to fail" is a necessary part of professional working life. It is inevitable that not everything will always go right. It is not the falling or the failure that is the issue. To some extent it is inevitable. It is how we react and recover, avoid being damaged by the fall and also learn from the experience that really matters.
Many very successful people failed first, often a number of times, before achieving great things. At Fred Astaire's first screen test the casting director concluded "Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Not Handsome. Can dance a little." Steven Spielberg was rejected by the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts multiple times. After Harrison Ford's first small movie role, an executive took him into his office and told him he'd never succeed in the movie business!
I found this great quote in an article by Michael Michalko, an expert on creative thinking: "Failure is only a word that human beings use to judge a given situation. Instead of fearing failure, we should learn that failures, mistakes and errors are the way we learn and the way we grow. Many of the world's greatest successes have learned how to fail their way to success."
Admittedly not all of this passed through my mind as I tumbled to the ground, but it did make me think and eventually to write this blog. The dog by the way hardly seemed to be bothered or even to notice my fall from grace - the faithless creature!
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