Coping with failure: What’s in your toolbox?

2009 September 28

by Kevin E. Blake

Photo by: cygnus921

I was running out of room in my toolbox and needed to get a bigger one. So, I bought a new toolbox this weekend.

This cross pollinated with the ideas I have been learning about fixed and growth mindsets in the book Mindset by Carol Dweck Ph.D.

There are people that go through life thinking that they can only have one toolbox. Ever. And that the tools that came in that toolbox are the only tools they will ever have. They polish and shine that toolbox and its tools. Showing it off to everyone they can.

“Here, look at my toolbox. Isn’t it grand? I can do anything with the tools I have.”
“Oh, you don’t have a saw? I’m so sorry, I guess you’ll have to make do. Have you seen how sharp my saw is?”
“Why don’t I use the chisel for that? Well, um, I really don’t need it for this.”

For these people the toolbox is a metaphor for who they are. The tools are their talents and strengths. Getting approval for those talents and strengths is the most important thing in the world. If you don’t give them approval and praise that means they are deficient. To make themselves feel better they may decide you’re too deficient to understand them. These are people for which failure really is not an option. Failure means they are not good enough and they have no way of changing that.

I make these people sound pathetic. I’m using extreme examples, there are various degrees this can occur. I know, this is the toolbox I’ve been carrying all my life.

Then there are others where the toolbox is a metaphor for their goals. The tools are what they need to accomplish that goal. And if the tools they have aren’t sufficient to accomplish that goal they go get more tools and they learn how to use them properly.

Failure means something else entirely to these people. Failure is not an ending, it just means they need to learn a new strategy to get where they want to go.

In the past, I only saw the surface meaning of Edison’s quote about his “failed” light bulbs:

“I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

Maybe that is all he meant, but I think there is a deeper meaning: Don’t judge the failures or yourself because of them.

If you’re like me and have lived with only one toolbox and only one set of tools your whole life, this is not an idea that is easy to accept. Egos are massive things, and they have a great deal of inertia. Making this kind of mind switch is not an overnight endeavor. It is a life long effort.

And if you’re coming at this in the middle part of your life or later, like I am, this is even more daunting. You’re probably thinking that you don’t have time to learn new stuff and enjoy it. If you are, then you are still thinking about success and failure as the end product. You see it as “When I achieve this, I will be a success.”

This isn’t true. You may have completed your task or goal, or you may have failed to complete it. That doesn’t make you a success or failure. You are still just you. And if you failed to complete it, like Edison, you now know one way it doesn’t work. Now go figure out how to make it work.