DEBATE: Do You Really Learn More From Failure Than Success?

Is the trendy truism true?

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Hey Michael!

As we travel, you and I have been doing a series of online debates.

Today I’m curious what you think about…the importance of failure!

These days, many people say failure is even more important than success. Is it?

I think about my career as a writer — how it’s been really, really hard. Indeed, here are all the times I’ve bitched about it recently in this very newsletter:

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But here’s what I don’t usually say: when I first started out as a writer, I suuuuuuucked. And I just couldn’t see it. I thought I was great! How could the rest of the world not see my amazing talent and genius?! What, were they blind?

The truth is, it took years — nay, decades! — of humiliating, unrelenting rejection — of me revising, and pivoting, and reassessing, and just plain sucking it up, over and over again — to turn me into a half-decent writer.

Without all that failure, I worry I’d mostly still suck, and I wouldn’t be able to see it.

I think writers need to fail. A lot. That’s how we get halfway decent.

It’s a bit like what Captain Kirk says in the one fantastic scene in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: pain and suffering are important. They play an essential role in making us who we are.

“Damn it, Bones, you're a doctor! You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away. I need my pain!”

The greater point is, OMG, yaaassssss! I’ve learned sooooo muuuuuch mooooore from my failures — in my writing! in my relationships! — than I ever have from my successes! They’ve literally made me who I am!

Indeed, I’m now a good enough writer to know that I’m currently way over-using italics, punctuation, and hyperbole, and I really regret just using the word, “Nay.”

So, Michael, I’ll turn this thing over to you.

Brent

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Hey Brent!

I still vividly remember my first really big failure. Ironically, it came on the heels of one of my first big successes.

Despite being a nerdy, overweight, introverted bookworm, I somehow managed to get myself elected Junior Class President of Bear Creek High School in Lakewood, Colorado.

Everyone assumed Rhonda Shellhorn would win, including me. After all, she was a very popular cheerleader. When I called my mom to say I’d won, even she didn’t believe it.

This is it! I thought. The beginning of my political career! One day I might even be president of the United States!

Alas, things went sideways fast.