What wisdom can I buy with this failure?

When was the last time you updated the story you told yourself about failure?

For most of us, the answer is never. Our expectations around success are immature and unhelpful at best. If we don’t take home the gold with every outing, we’re a worthless piece of shit who doesn’t even deserve to be in business.

Wow, this is not a helpful narrative. Sounds like my inner monologue before entering my forties. It lacks compassion, practicality and resilience.

If we want to better tolerate discomfort during the inevitable failures of our professional journey, then we must learn to accept the following truth.

The price of wisdom is failure. Screwing up may or may not make us dumb, but learning from it guarantees we’re smart.

Knight, the shoe dog who transformed the way people thought about running, writes about wisdom in his inspiring memoir:

Wisdom is an intangible asset, but an asset all the same, and one that justifies risk.

Phil, in the early seventies, was confronted with the potential bust of his first company. He said:

I would have no money and be crushed, but I would also have some valuable wisdom which I could apply to the next business.

Knight’s brand of forward thinking is precisely what keeps people in the game. It’s what makes playing worthwhile. Let me recommend a tool in the personal creativity management system called nexting, which is a way to update the story you tell yourself about failure.

This particular attitude has had special resonance for me, as there have been numerous career failures that have bought me wisdom.

Like the expensive video production studio I built in my office. I killed myself launching this virtual training product that only one of my clients ever paid real money for.

Or the advertising agency I worked for a year. Despite putting in long hours, not a single one of my campaign ideas was approved or used by any of our clients.

Or what about the time I took that six hour train across state lines to do a three minute television interview to promote my new book? My segment ended up on the cutting room floor.

The list goes on and on, so I won’t indulge in any more failure porn.

What matters about experiences like these are the learnings. Once disappointment happens, nexting is when we get in the habit of asking ourselves, okay, what would I have to learn about this mistake to make it no longer a mistake?

And over time we ask, what wisdom has this failure bought me?

It’s a much more compassionate way of treating ourselves. One that sets us up for success down the road, no matter how bad we eat shit in the moment.

What do you say to yourself to tolerate discomfort during the inevitable failures of your creative efforts?