Raising young kids places us in the presence of a lot of failure. And that’s great because it also places us in the presence of a lot of learning.
Children come into the world with a need to experiment and learn. We understand that failure is an inevitable part of their growth. But why should this mentality stop in adulthood?
My son is now at an age where we’re experimenting with everything from the monkey bars to Nintendo. We’ve bonded over the latter as he discovers video games, and I look for pieces of my childhood that are still relevant today to share with my kids.
A few weekends ago, he and I were stuck on a level of Super Mario Bros. 3 when he said, “Dad, let’s just play another game.” Anyone who knows me knows how competitive I can be, including even games as trivial as Mario. So, we stuck to it, and after a few more tries, we completed the level.
Fast forward to this weekend, and he comes screaming out of the basement with something like, “DAD, I BEAT BOWSER FOR THE FIRST TIME. I kept trying and trying until I finally beat him.” It’s hard to replicate the excitement of a 5-year-old making progress on something they care about.
Before I go any further, I realize this example is trivial; it’s just Nintendo. But this triviality highlights that we don’t always realize how closely our kids watch us for examples of how to act.
In this case, the example is how to handle failure. At some point, we’re taught to avoid failure, and we eventually lose the awareness that failure is a necessary ingredient of success.
But, without the failure that comes with pushing ourselves, life is pretty dull. I’m not talking about basic failures that we can avoid through diligence and attention to detail or the type of failures we can’t control. We should always avoid the former and can’t predict the latter.
Instead, there are intelligent failures that teach us something new or push us forward in ways we don’t expect. These types of failure have four traits in common:
Push us beyond our current knowledge
Be in pursuit of a larger goal
Not be a random guess
Result in as small of failure as possible
Even the Nintendo example fits here. We didn’t know if we had the skill to beat the level, the goal is to beat the game, we made guesses on how to win, and the cost of failure is just time – which we’re spending together.
“Do you get a promotion every year, in your job?” “No, right? So every year you work is a failure? Yes or no. No? Every year you work, you work towards something, towards a goal, which is to get a promotion, to be able to take care of your family, provide a house for them, or take care of your parents. You work towards a goal – it’s not a failure. It’s steps to success.”
-Giannis Anteokounmpo
Kids are exceptional at this type of failure. At a young age, almost everything is new and pursued based on some inkling of interest, whereas failure is just the cost of time (which seems infinite as a child).
But adults should embrace this type of failure, too. We should push ourselves to learn where we have blind spots, pursue goals that test our limits, and do so with a thesis in mind that results in small failures.
No company embodies this failure framework better than Amazon.
They’ve experimented in areas without expertise, as highlighted by going from a digital bookstore to AWS to television. The larger goal has always been “The Everything Store.” (big goal) Internal memos are six pages written emphasizing data to support a hypothesis. (not random) They encourage managers to pursue anything that is a “two-way door” – meaning small failures are encouraged. (small failure)
When we avoid failure, we also avoid discovery and accomplishment. The only way to succeed in any endeavor worth trying is to be willing to experiment, to try new things, knowing full well that many of them will yield failures.
We have to embrace those kinds of failures because overcoming them creates better outcomes and joy and self-satisfaction that are hard to beat.