Talent Development Resources................failure : page 2

.. .. Okay, so what would happen if you tried for something and didn't get it? That form would simply turn into another. In the creative life, everything catalyzes us into further expression.  I have an artist client who ripped up a painting into tiny pieces and then used those fragments in a mosaic design.  There is no wasted love. Even science says, that pure energy can never be destroyed. If you don't get a certain result, I bet there's a better fit for you down the road.  For example, I sent a self-conscious manuscript of This Time I Dance! to literary agents who rejected it.  That "failure" prompted me to totally ignore "the market" and write, design and self-publish the book of my bones.  Later, my self-published book was discovered, praised, and bought by Penguin Putnam. I'm glad those first few agents refused my original manuscript.

That "failure" gave me nothing left to lose and prompted me to pray and wail on paper. It led me to my greatest joy yet. But people do fail you think.  No, that's interpretation. Some may choose to wear a momentary outcome as a poisonous badge of honor, lift a bitter glass of cynicism and toast the death of dreams.  But that's a choice. It's the choice to stop dancing, to stop learning, to stop believing, and trusting the integrity of your journey.  I never fail while dancing. As long as I'm listening to the moment and moving, I'm going forward; there is no going backward.  So dear one, our success is inevitable. There is no wasted love. There is no wasted creativity. There is no wasted peace of mind. And there is no way to stand still in your life, when you're dancing. Tama J. Kieves from her Trusting the Journey Times ezine [on her site] ...This Time I Dance! Trusting the Journey of Creating  the Work You Love: How One Harvard Lawyer  Left It All to Have It All!

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.. .. fail-ure - 1. the state or fact of being lacking or insufficient 2. a losing of power or strength; weakening, dying away. 3. not doing; neglect or omission. 4. not succeeding in doing or becoming. 5. person who does not succeed. BABE RUTH spent his childhood years in an orphanage and then struck out 1,330 times on his way to 714 home runs and baseball immortality.  In 1954, ELVIS PRESLEY was fired from the Grand Ole Opry after only one performance and told by the manager, "You ain't goin' nowhere, son. Better get y'all job back drivin' a truck." OPRAH WINFREY didn't let getting fired from her television reporter's job and being told, "You're not fit for TV," keep her from becoming one of the most beloved and successful women in television. In 1933, WALTER CRONKITE failed an early audition in local radio and was told by the radio station manager that he would never make it as a radio announcer. He went on to become one of America's most recognizable and trusted voices.

Being unable to hear or speak didn’t shut down HELEN KELLER’s world. It opened her up to a life more full than most able-bodied people might experience in a lifetime. All these people have one thing in common. They refused to let hardships stop them on the road to victory.  They learned that every triumphant discovery resulted from many unsuccessful experiments; that every home run has been tempered by a multitude of missed swings; that every great script was built on the back of endless rewrites; that every top performer has been humiliated by more than one performance; that many a scrumptious recipe found its way to the dinner table through burnt and bruised trials; that failure is part of the process that breeds success. from the Preface of the book : ...Great Failures of the Extremely Successful :  Mistakes, Adversity, Failure and Other Stepping  Stones to Success - by Steve Young

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.. .. Other people erroneously think that the present moment is insignificant. I talked to a man last spring who had started a project that could have helped many people live better lives. Unfortunately, he was promoting it badly and it was going nowhere. He defended his failure by saying, "It will all unfold in its own time."

Nonsense. Dreams need people to champion them and act on their behalf. This wait and see attitude ignores another essential truth: dreams come with an expiration date. from Dreams Can't Wait - By Barbara Winter -  Changing Course Newsletter, Feb 4, 2004   ...Making a Living Without a Job :  Winning Ways For Creating Work That You Love --  by Barbara Winter site : BarbaraWinter.com

 

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.. .. To hear Robert Sternberg tell it, his life has been one mistake after another. And a good thing, too. "Most of the work I've done stems from my own insecurities and failures," says the Yale psychologist, almost proudly.  "Many of my ideas come from the things I think I don't do well--which are a lot of things." I.Q. tests, for one. The low scores Sternberg achieved as a child led later to his theory of practical intelligence--and a book by the same name--about the kind of smarts that matter in the real world. ...  Sternberg has written or edited more than fifty books in his twenty-three-year career...... [Psychology Today, May-June, 1998]

Robert J. Sternberg, PhD, is Director of The PACE Center of Yale University for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise -  author/editor of books including: Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid Handbook of Creativity Defying the Crowd: Cultivating Creativity in a Culture of Conformity The Nature of Creativity: Contemporary Psychological Perspectives Successful Intelligence: How Practical and Creative Intelligence Determines Success in Life

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.. .. With all the success, the insecurities continue to roil. "When there is a crowd of 3,000 and it's sold out and suddenly one person gets up and heads to the back of the auditorium, it's devastating," [says David Sedaris].  "I don't think about the other 2,999 people sitting there. I think about the one person who left. And why? His judgment means something. That just never goes away."

It's that very seam -- anxiety, marginalization and alienation -- that so vividly stitches up his work.  "I thought the last book was it. Then I thought I would begin my slow descent into obscurity and alcoholism. "I'm very aware that careers don't go on forever. So I'm happy ... to bask in it. Be accessible." Those fans see their failures, their isolation, even their passing bliss, in Sedaris' stories.  "You look at his life," said Stephanie Thatcher who drove from San Diego for the show and said she would gladly wait the two more for her chat and signature. "You look at all that's happened. Where he's been and where he is, and think, it can happen to you." from article David Sedaris plays the antihero well. And he doesn't  read his press.  By Lynell George, LA Times Jun 29 2004 ...Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim -  by David Sedaris      [Amazon]

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Failure is a very good teacher. It hurts so badly, you have to sit back and stare at it. It's humiliating. You want to learn from your mistakes and make it better. Revolution Studios chief Joe Roth - about the boxoffice performance of films such as  "Hollywood Homicide" and "Gigli" ... [Hollywood Reporter, Aug 12-18 2003]

*related pages:....perfectionism.......nurturing talent

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Ellen Muth ...[stars as George (for Georgia) Lass in the Showtime series Dead Like Me] : The way I differ from George is that I have something that interests me, and some direction... the way I do relate to her, though, is that I have low self-esteem, and so does George, even though I'm not sure if she realizes it.  But I still feel like I haven't accomplished anything, and she feels that way, too, like she never accomplished anything in her life.  And I still feel like I haven't made it anywhere, I haven't done anything, and I'll never get anywhere in life, and I'm going to be a failure my whole life. And I know in the rational part of my mind that it's not true.   UGO.com interview, July 2003 posted on ellen-muth.com

.. .. At 14, Ellen Muth drew widespread attention with her portrayal of the young Selena in the film "Dolores Claiborne." .... Her first starring role in feature film "The Young Girl & the Monsoon," earned her the AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival Best Actress Award in 1999. [info from Showtime page]

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The Ten Forms of Twisted Thinking 1. All-or-nothing thinking - You see things in black-or-white categories. If a situation falls short of perfect, you see it as a total failure. .... 2. Overgeneralization - You see a single negative event, such as a romantic rejection or a career reversal, as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using words such as "always" or "never" when you think about it. .... 3. Mental Filter - You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water. .... ....more items on page :....nurturing mental health : page 2

.. .. ...from The Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns, M.D. posted on bpdrecovery.com] site: BPD Recovery -  recovering from Borderline Personality Disorder. image from cover of Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy  from a Buddhist Perspective by Mark Epstein, MD

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- academic "failure" - Just as uneven profiles often characterize the abilities of high-IQ individuals, uneven profiles also characterize individuals gifted in music or art, who may have a strong gift in the presence of an unremarkable IQ. ... Csikszentmihalyi et al. found that the artistically gifted adolesents they studied had poor academic skills. from article : Giftedness: Current Theory and Research by Ellen Winner, PhD,  Current Directions in Psychological Science, October 2000 **Talented Teenagers : The Roots of Success and Failure by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi et al photo: Johnny Depp dropped out of school at 17 in hopes of becoming a rock musician [imdb.com]

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[People have said that at 20, you haven't paid your dues, that you're too young to be producing a movie.] Young people can do anything they want to do. ... You know, starting at 29 is great. And maybe I should have waited and started when I was a certain age where I was guaranteed to not fail.  But that's boring... I wanted to take a risk... I have a lot inside of me I can do and give. And whether I'll do it successfully or not or up to other people's standards -- hey, maybe I'll fail. But failure is a wonderful thing too, you know. .......Alicia Silverstone   [TV Guide interview]

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.. .. Dana was in her thirties when she came to my workshop because she was experiencing what she called a "free-floating sense of dissatisfaction" with her job.  She enjoyed the high-level position she held at a large computer company, but a small voice in her heart whispered to her that there was more.... she was not fulfilled.

As Dana talked, I picked up on phrases like "I should feel happy" and "I look successful but I feel like a failure." So I asked Dana point blank what would make her feel like a success. She paused for less than fifteen seconds  before blurting out "being able to bring my dog to work."  It seems that Dana had always had a vision in her mind of being able to bring her beloved dog, Bodhi, with her to work. To Dana, being able to bring her dog to work signified autonomy; it meant one of two things: Either she had  climbed high enough on the corporate ladder that she was beyond policies, or she was running her own company where she could establish her own rules.  Deciding between the two was not difficult for her, and Dana is now happily running her own web design business, with Bodhi snoozing contentedly under her desk.  ....from book:  If Success Is a Game, These Are the Rules by Cherie Carter-Scott, PhD

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.. .. In the last few years, her losses have helped [actress Ruth de Sosa] alter her perspective.  "It's difficult," she says, "to get out of the loop of failure. ... What I wish our society would talk more about is failure. It's [the] art of life and there are ways to use it." With a new manager and a steady string of work, including a one-woman stage show, "The Lemony Fresh Scent of Diva Monsoon," ... De Sosa is lit with new purpose.

She's rebuilding momentum, climbing up the hill. But this time a different one. "I think in this business you're living for the future not the present. Even now, after all I lost, I still phrase things around, 'When I'm famous.... When I get that, I'll do this..' "We all do. It's not that I don't still want it. I think that I'm much more wise. "I will never forget doing a workshop and overhearing someone say: 'Is that Ruth de Sosa? What happened to her career? I remember when she was on the way up.' "And I'm thinking: Wow. No one ever told me that! I think a lot of people who are successful don't always feel successful. from article Hollywood Balancing Act by Lynell George  photo : Ruth de Sosa in "The Young Indiana  Jones Chronicles" (1992) tv series

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What I was interested in, more than anything else, was failure.  Because it's easy to succeed. All of these people around me were succeeding in various ways, but when they failed, which everyone occasionally does, I would watch them like a nasty little hawk. [laughs]  What did they do with it? Did they sulk? If they did something with it, nothing impressed me more than that. ... I tried to learn to fail. I tried to think that was not a bad thing because when I was watching those people, their best stuff had to do with failure. Laurie Anderson   [Interview mag., Sept. 2001]*****biography: Laurie Anderson

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excerpts from The Creativity Book by Eric Maisel, PhD............

Exercise: Forgive Yourself For Past Mistakes and Failures Make many little pencil marks on a piece of paper, each standing for a past failure. Then erase them one by one. As you do, say, "Maybe that was a failure, but I'm moving on. Erase the violin recital that went sour. Erase the scholarship that you didn't win. Erase the book that you started writing but never finished. Erase the stupid thing you said that cost you a promotion. Erase the terrible choice of lover you made. Erase the binge drinking episode and the six months lost to depression. At the end of the exercise say, "I forgive myself for all of this. I really mean it!"

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.. .. After all, we create our own reality, don't we? All I had to do was believe in myself and I could do anything, right? At least, that's what it said in every self-improvement book I'd ever read -- and I had read them all.  Just think positive, tough it out, never quit. If you can't follow through on a dream, the problem is all in your head. Change your thinking. Pardon me, but when I write those words I start getting all steamed up because believing them made me feel like a complete failure.

If those phrases work for you, more power to you, but they have never worked for me. I can't tell myself how to think. I can't do just anything I set my mind to (trust me on that one -- I've been trying to learn Latin for years). As for quitting, I'm famous for it. I still fall off diets with stunning regularity. Barbara Sher - from her book Live the Life You Love photo from barbarasher.com more books by Barbara Sher : It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now : How to Create Your Second Life at Any Age I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was : How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It Wishcraft : How to Get What You Really Want

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Failure is a very good teacher. It hurts so badly, you have to sit back and stare at it. It's humiliating. You want to learn from your mistakes and make it better. Revolution Studios chief Joe Roth - about the boxoffice performance of films such as  "Hollywood Homicide" and "Gigli" ... [Hollywood Reporter, Aug 12-18 2003]

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Newer research on self defeatists shows that fear and low self esteem are not the only culprits. "Self defeat often seems to follow from people's inflated opinion of themselves," say Steven Berglas and Roy Baumeister, the authors of "Your Own Worst Enemy..."  Berglas and Baumeister say that, at bottom, most self-saboteurs are obsessed with how others perceive them. "Some of the worst patterns of self-defeat are set in motion by fear of being seen in an unflattering light," they write. To avoid having that unflattering light shed on them, self-saboteurs resort to one or more of the following behaviors:  Misguided persistence : Face it: Some of the brainstorms we come up with at work stink. Some of the relationships we get into are doomed. But self saboteurs won't give up. . "We may persist against our better judgment simply to avoid being called quitters," the psychologists write. Self-handicapping : In this approach, the self saboteur uses impediments to preserve an image of competency. The impediments might be as drastic as substance abuse or as seemingly benign as caring for a sickly relative. "Experiments have shown that people with low self- esteem engage in self-handicapping to protect themselves against failure."*** from Winter '96 GRADDA Newsletter: The Greater Rochester Attention Deficit Disorder Association **Your Own Worst Enemy: Understanding the Paradox  of Self-Defeating Behavior - by Steven Berglas, Roy Baumeister

French poster for  Rebel Without a Cause

....related page:  self-limiting
 

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The only advice I've ever given anybody - because it's the only advice I feel sure of, and the only advice I wouldn't have listened to myself -- is that you've got to be persistent. Because the hardest thing is getting anyone's attention.  Once you've done that, it's much easier. ... You know, if that's your goal as a writer [doing formula scripts], I'm not judging it.  It's just that, for me, it doesn't serve my purpose -- which is that I'd like to do something that's challenging or risky or that I don't feel has been done or haven't seen done before.

.. .. I feel like I'm doing something then. ... The risk of failure is important. Charlie Kaufman [infocusmag.com, April 2002] [his scripts include Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Confessions of a Dangerous Mind; Adaptation; Human Nature, and Being John Malkovich]

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.. .. In general, the stronger we desire something, the more we want to succeed, and the greater our anxiety about failure. Our worries and fears are reminders of the strength of our positive desires...

Our anxieties are indispensable in spite of the discomfort that accompanies them.  To try to do away with them would be foolish. Morita therapy is not really a psychotherapeutic method for getting rid of "symptoms." It is more an educational method for outgrowing our self-imposed limitations. Through Moritist methods we learn to accept the naturalness of ourselves. David Reynolds, Ph.D. - from Morita Therapy page on ToDo Institute site   David Reynolds.  A Handbook for Constructive Living

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....related pages :....perfectionism......perspectives on talent.......self-esteem / self concept

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