Navigating Crisis, Challenge, and Change (Part 3): Failure is a Gift

By Ali Shalfrooshan, Head of International Assessment R&D

In my third blog about navigating crisis, challenge, and change (read the first one here and the second here), I am focusing on the topic of perceived failure. While not a feeling we naturally covet, failure is not something we should avoid thinking about, but rather something we accept, embrace, and use as fuel for growth. Our brains quite literally are wired to create new connections based on certain experiences, failure being one of them. More on that to come below.

An ecosystem for challenge, change, and comparison

Over the last two years, the world around us changed and we were presented with a whole host of challenges we never anticipated. Our ability to think clearly and overcome adversity in the moment were invaluable. However, when we define what resilience truly is, it isn’t just surviving through the difficult times; resilience is our ability to face challenges, changes, and setbacks and use them to grow and learn from those moments.

In addition, resilience is not defined by constant victory and success. This sometimes gets lost in our wondrous world of social media, where we have access to the curated lives of the wealthiest, most symmetrical, and most successful people on the planet. 

We are constantly bombarded by stories of unmitigated success, so our perceptions of the commonplace failures and setbacks everyone experiences are both skewed and diluted. Even when people choose to be vulnerable by sharing their foibles, imperfections, and anxieties, it is still a filtered view, as no picture or text fully communicates what a person has truly experienced.

When we compare ourselves to these surface level victories, we assume that only success, achievement, and happiness are valuable. We may spend our time wondering why everyone else seems to get it right and make it look easy with swan-like poise while we stumble gracelessly through the catwalk of life. 

The truth is, there are times we may rise to the occasion and many others we feel like we failed or could have done significantly better. Over the last two years, many of us can relate to feeling overwhelmed at times by the amount of challenge and change catapulted in our direction. The reality is that while the potentially negative feelings that these failures elicit may not be enjoyable, they provide the most fertile ground for growth.

Negative emotions should be embraced

In a world of being bombarded by surface level success, sometimes it feels that negative emotions need to be avoided, ignored, or disavowed. However, these emotions are valuable and healthy, and we need to learn to manage them without denial.

Emotions aren’t necessarily good or bad, they are just states and signals that allow us to pay more attention to the events that create them. Negative emotions may not always be pleasant to experience. However, they are there to alert us that something needs to change and will hopefully motivate us to act. 

Therefore, when we fail, these emotions need to be managed rather than ignored so we can use them as fuel for learning. By acknowledging them, we can avoid a sense of failure evolving into a sense of shame.

"Our brains are so primed for survival that their ability to build new connections is not only facilitated by, but also dependent on us failing."

Shame versus guilt

When it comes to failure, we may use the terms shame and guilt interchangeably to describe our feelings. However, there’s a big difference between the two in terms of both definition and outcome. 

• Guilt can help you understand how your actions impact others and how you can improve. 

• Shame, on the other hand, is an inward-facing emotion that reflects how you feel about yourself. 

A meta-analysis by Leach and Cidam in 2015 showed that guilt typically leads to pro-social and constructive behavior, as the failures were ultimately seen as reparable, so they elicited positive action. Shame focused the failure on who you are, rather than the situation and your actions. Therefore, despite being thought of as similar, shame led to less pro-social behavior, as the source of the issue was perceived as irreparable and pervasive. 

Therefore, it is important that any failure is perceived as a reaction to the context, situation, and what we did rather than who we are. Consequently, failure should be seen as transient, as we all can make the wrong decisions. Our response is what is most important, as we need to use these events as an opportunity to learn and grow.  

Failure, the fuel for activation of learning 

What we commonly call “learning” when defined in neurobiological terms is the result of triggering a state of plasticity within our brains. Neuroplasticity is the physiological act of our brain growing new connections in both our nervous system and neuronal networks. It is a state that children can tap into very easily, hence their ability to develop, learn, and grow at such astonishing levels. 

For those above the age of 25, this state of plasticity can still exist, but is typically much harder to tap into. In fact, research by neurobiologists show that failure is one of the few things that inspires this state of plasticity. Therefore, effective learning is created by a chemical urgency, requiring the right mix of chemicals to create a learning cocktail.

These physiological systems confirm why failure is so important for our growth. Our brains are so primed for survival that their ability to build new connections is not only facilitated by, but also dependent on us failing.

So what does this all mean?

Be compassionate to yourself. If you have ever felt like you have failed, not been at your best, or simply struggled, give yourself grace. Everyone fails. It is a natural part of being human and is also the very foundation of learning. We can grow through these experiences. However, the key for feelings of failure to be useful is to not avoid or disavow these feelings, but to manage and accept them. 

Failure is useful. The research shows that failure not only inspires growth but is the perfect chemical ecosystem for our brains to learn. Take the opportunity to use these experiences to strengthen yourself. If you are comparing yourself to others, try to be fair and set yourself realistic expectations. Overall experience is the best way for us to develop. If we fear failure, we will deny ourselves the opportunity to truly grow and flourish. 

In the next blog in this series, we will focus on how we can maximize our learning and use these setbacks to propel us forward using the power of reflection and renewal.