A discussion on failure from one of my 7×7 mentoring events. The topic…career flux and career change. A group of women from 20 to 40-something share their thoughts on failure:
Q. How do we learn from failure?
A. Failure is a good thing. This quote from Steve Jobs always helps me keep failure in perspective. Anyone can rise from failure. – 30-something life-coach, author, career and business strategist
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. – Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005
A. The scripts in America are all anti-failure. We run away from failure. We think failure is bad. We submit to the pressure to be perfect. We act based on what is expected of us socially and culturally. But truth is, you learn more from failure. Embrace it. – 40-something lawyer turned journalist and author
A. The high of failure is higher than the low of highs. – 40-somerhing, app developer,
A. Try not to listen to the “committee” in your head and listen to yourself. Define what it is for you. – 40-something, organizational / workplace expert, people development
You must define “failure” for yourself, because if you don’t, there’s a whole world of people out there who will define it for you.” – JK Rowling’s Commencement speech at Harvard
A. There is so much to unpack from your failure that doing it slowly makes you learn more from the experience of feeling the failure rather than rushing through it. It took me 4 years to get out of marriage but wouldn’t give it up for the world. I learned so much about myself. So that is a failure I would never regret. I couldn’t have done it faster. It was a process. Other people might define divorce as a failure but for me it was ultimately my success.” – 40-something lawyer
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