Failure as Feedback

Failure is that you calling? — Photo By Andrea Piacquadio

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.” — Frank Herbert

I imagine failure to be a weird, and puzzling creature. 🧟‍♂️

Born from recycling the past and our apprehensions of the future, it can leave us petrified in its wake.

Yet, ‘Failure Frang-Kuhn-Shteen’, somehow never ceases to be scary, regardless of how old and wise we get.

…Maybe it’s time we change that.

It’s time to treat failures less like a designer and more like a scientist.

Failure in science is an essential prerequisite to success.

Now I can’t take sole credit for this revelation. In fact, It took a humbling conversation with Toleen Badawi a.k.a The Executive Monk, to enlighten me about Thomas Edison ( inventor extraordinaire) and his 1000 failed attempts at crafting the eponymous lightbulb.

Edison, when probed by a journalist about “ What it was like to fail a thousand times?” responded by saying, “Oh…I never failed. It was just a one thousand step process.”

Thomas Edison was driven by curiosity… not fear.

He did what all of us should strive to do.

Re-contextualize the demon and turn failure into feedback.