Fail Furious- The Ultimate Power of Failure Immunity

Fail Furious- The Ultimate Power of Failure Immunity

“I am a failure..I keep getting rejections..I am not enough..” I keep hearing these statements quite often nowadays. I am sure you also are hearing “Imposter Experience and Imposter Syndrome”, which is more a thing, often than ever recently. I want to share my story and I hope it makes some sense to YOU!!!

Here are a few of my biggest early-life failures:

·       I was in the bottom 20% of my class during elementary school.

·       Received so many “F”s during my middle school.

·       Finished high school in 5 years (HS was 3 years back then) as the last person who graduated from my HS cohort.

·       Got into to the College after 3 years of try (I was not able to get the minimum required score from the National College Entrance exam-SAT).

·       The undergraduate program (elementary school teaching) that I got into was the second from the last in Turkey.

·       My GPA was below 3.0.

·       I did not get accepted into even 1 single master’s program in Turkey.

 After all of those failures, I wanted to challenge myself with more failures, but not in Turkey anymore. At the age of 26, I took an exam (GRE equivalent exam in Turkey) and as a result of my exceptional score, I was eligible to apply to a program that offered a full-scholarship to get my graduate education in the United States. Yes, I know… you started seeing some accomplishments here lol I am proud of that score because I was in the top ~2% 😊 Keep reading though more failures are coming!!!

 The Department of Education in Turkey administered a test to determine the English language proficiency levels of students.

·       I was the second from the last (#699) among 700 individuals. I met most of those people who slightly passed me as well as the # 700 in the United States 😊

·       My highest TOEFL score was 67.

·       My highest GRE score was barely 1000.

·       I applied to 80 master programs and got 1 acceptance.

·       I am a first-gen and my parents only went to elementary school. So, I did not get any mentoring/encouragement about “reading lots of books!”

·       I was a “B” student during my graduate education.

 After completing my education, I decided to stay in the US. I started applying for jobs, but had a big issue, visa sponsorship. Struggle was real even after I got my green card.

·       I applied to about 100 jobs, received 8 interviews and got only 1 job offer.

 I decided to share my unique story with YOU because I want YOU to know that you are NOT alone! I understand and respect that you may be a “perfectionist”, you may not like to “fail”, you may not know how to cope with “failure”, or you may be an “over achiever”! I hear YOU and feel YOU!!

My friends know this, vulnerability and strong failure immunity are two of my strengths that actually made me a better professional!! I am LEARNING only when I FAIL…I am feeling like I am ACVHIEVING actually only when I FAIL…and I feel really good about FAILING FAST/OFTEN 😊 I enjoy it because I am becoming someone smarter and wiser!

 Here are some tips:

·       Mentoring matters! Do not wait for mentors to find you! You need to seek for mentors!

·       Build a strong professional network! Find “friends” at work or in the professional networking platforms, LinkedIn. Connectedness matters! You feel more connected to your colleagues, you will feel “belong and valued!”

·       Ask yourself lots of questions! How can I prepare myself for better and bigger failures? What can I do to get unstuck? Who do I need to talk to get some advice?

·        Reframe your Problems/Failures! Instead of saying “I keep getting rejections” YOU may start saying “I will be practicing my interviewing skills to get better at job interviews”, “It might be about my resume, I may need to improvise my application materials!”

·        Celebrate your accomplishments! I am still working on this, but I highly encourage YOU to at least try to learn how to say “I did a good job actually!”

·        BE PROUD OF YOURSELF! Appreciate all of your failures and be grateful how far you have come!  

Dare to Lead, Brene Brown, is must to read to learn more about failure immunity and vulnerability!

In addition, Design Thinking (DT) has helped me tremendously! In DT, YOU learn how to develop a designer mindset that is very biased towards action; therefore, YOU have to keep prototyping and testing. The other words, DT embraces failure as a means of learning. As I mentioned above, failing fast/often allows me better articulate where I actually failed and where I must make improvements.  

Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett & Dave Evans, must be in your reading list!

If I was brave enough to move another country, started learning English at the age of 26 (did not know any English back then, I know not much progress there), started reading books (reading a 200+ pages book in a few days), keep failing and learning, then failing more….I am confident to say that I “DID IT!” If I can, yes YOU CAN, too!!

Good luck!!

Yasir - Fail Furious Expert