Overcoming Failure

I was thinking about what the topic for the month of May should be and this time it was my wife who gave me the idea: overcoming failure. In some games, failure is an integral part of the gameplay loop, creating a journey of a thousand deaths before conquering the final bosses – “I am Malenia, blade of Miquella” resounding in minds of millions of Elden Ring players.

Here’s the thing though. Games, while often challenging, also give you the motivation to stay engaged, get better and conquer. I’m typing this while finishing Elden Ring for the third time and getting the “100% completion” achievement.

Real life on the other hand can be extremely punitive and demoralizing, with no clear rewards in sight. 

A good example of that is our typical school system. Getting bad grades has in my view never helped any of my classmates. It only created a division between “that person who knows everything” and “that person who’s an idiot”. Because a bad grade stays with you; getting a better one does not allow you to reset your score, merely improve the average.

In elementary and high school I was excelling in virtually every subject, except the Slovenian language. In that class, getting 4s instead of 5s (5 is the highest grade), made me resent Slovenian language more than any other subject we had in school. All it did was make me think “oh well, guess I’m better at Italian and English”.

I didn’t choose the examples of gaming and schools randomly by the way. There are schools attempting to use “gamification”, and specifically, the idea of experience gain in schools. Instead of traditional grades, every assignment, every milestone is represented by experience gain. This way, there’s no “bad” experience, everything contributes towards leveling up. I think it’s fantastic, but we’ll see if it catches on!

Our whole lives are deeply intertwined with failing, learning, and improving. It is at the core of human ingenuity and survival. Without the mistakes, there’s no chance to get better. Some people do believe that they are perfect in every way, and they will consistently stagnate as a result. They’re literally the worst people to interact with – how can you have a conversation with someone who thinks they can do no wrong?

That in itself could veer off into a wholly different topic. For this post, I’m going to talk about the three steps (in my experience), that describe how I tackle failures. I was able to come up with an acronym, the AAA of failing:

1. Acknowledge (the failure)
2. Analyze (the failure)
3. Apply (the failure)

At the end of the blog post, there’s the conclusion with a practical example to illustrate this line of thinking.

1) Acknowledge

One of the easiest things to say to someone, right? How many times have you heard (or used) phrases like: Just own up to it! Admit you made a mistake already! You’re wrong! 

It is much easier to see the fault in other people’s behavior than our own. But that can also be turned around. If we listen to what people around us are telling us, or even actively ask them, they’ll be able to help us figure out our shortcomings.

When it comes to acknowledging a mistake, there are two huge barriers preventing us doing so.

The first one is that often times, our goals, wants, needs and desires are entirely undefined. Unlike projects with deadlines, or games with quests, we might not have specific ideas on how to get something done.

Having vague, or nonexistent goals will make it very difficult for us to own up and admit failure.

The second major issue when talking about learning from failure is playing the blame game. My partner didn’t support me enough. I didn’t have enough time because of work. I wasn’t given enough resources. I couldn’t possibly compete. Etc. etc…

Wether it is our arrogance, pride, or our fear of failure that’s driving this, it doesn’t matter. If we hope to grow into better people, it always starts by acknowledging what happened and being as honest as we can. In a simple word, I’m talking about accountability – something that lots of people simply delete from their dictionaries. It’s easier to have a scapegoat!

2) Analyze

I’m going to go ahead and state the obvious: analyzing our shortcomings sucks. Especially if what happened was recent and still fresh on our mind, our basic human instincts might be screaming to forget and run away.

But just like breaking down a previous game of chess is integral in becoming a chess grandmaster, we need to look back and analyze what happened. Specifically, focus on what you did right and also on what you could’ve done differently. If you think you messed up on every possible conceivable level, or, conversely, did absolutely everything right, then congratulations, you probably deserve a Guinness world record.

In all seriousness, it’s now a matter of looking back and truly delving into the ins and outs of the experience. But this is where it also gets really hard. Even though I believe that to some extent, we all “feel” when things could have gone differently, verbalizing and understanding what is tough. We might also fall into the trap of second guessing ourselves and wondering if anything would have even changed a single thing.

If stuck here, consider talking to someone and asking them for feedback – be careful though to not talk to someone who’s always going to take your side, no questions asked. That might lull you into a false sense of confidence about not doing anything wrong. 

Instead, talk to people that respect you enough to object to your crazy impulses or irrational thoughts. If needed, it’s absolutely possible to seek professional help in the form of counseling as well.

3) Apply

All of the knowledge in this world will not help us if we’re unable to apply it for future situations. And while every scenario is different, if we learn some key elements from our previous failures, we can extrapolate the meaning. Ask yourself: what is just one thing you could do differently next time? Even if you don’t think you’ll ever be in a similar situation again, it’s worthwhile processing and storing it somewhere in the depths of your brain, just in case.

According to Roman philosopher Seneca, in order to be prepared for the future, we have to imagine various different scenarios ahead of time (both favorable and not) so that we’re never caught completely off guard.

Having said that, of course every situation is different, so we can’t expect to get a complete reset or do-over with the learned knowledge from analyzing our past. We can’t just choose a new game or reload, like we would in a video game, so often times future situations are going to be compounded by the consequences of previous ones. In cases like that, we might have to apologize and seek forgiveness before anything else (but that in itself is another topic entirely).

Conclusion

Let me illustrate what I talked about above with one example. Let’s assume I got into an argument with someone over video games. It got heated. I yelled at them and cussed them out in three different languages. I also slammed my fist on the table (I guess we were at a bar), pushed the table away, stood up and left. Oh, and on my way out, flipped them off for good measure (that’ll show them). 

1. Acknowledge – it would be easy for me to say that I just don’t care. They “deserved” to be insulted. But if I truly didn’t care, then I wouldn’t get angry, so obviously that is not the case. And does anyone truly deserve to be insulted? What for? That only makes ourselves feel better and even that is momentary. Furthermore, maybe I got lucky, but slamming a table in public could have quite severe consequences. My actions were without a doubt a problem.
   
2. Analyze – I already know that I’m passionate about the topic and any passion can ignite very quickly. But what really got to me? Was it something specific that was said, or was it the way in which it was said? A smirk, a gesture, a dismissal? A condescending tone of voice perhaps? The overall person’s demeanor? Or did none of that matter, because ultimately, the person has an entirely different belief system than me and I expected them to change?
   
3. Apply – There are several possibilities here. For one, I can just steer clear of people who despise video games. And if that’s not something that I’m willing (or able) to do, then I can perhaps try to get better at changing the topic of conversation. If it’s the facial expressions I was bothered by, then perhaps I need to figure out how to either ignore them, or not let them affect me so much.

And then in a month time, I get in another argument. Same topic, different person. Back to the imaginary AAA drawing board. Fail and repeat. Trial and error. The example I used was one related to other people, because that’s when it gets more difficult. In other words, if our failure is related to our own doing, to a solitary activity or goal, it is somewhat easier to own up to it.

If we don’t think about our failures and learn from them, we’ll be stuck behind the same rock for years, complaining as to why it doesn’t budge even though we could have walked around a million times over. I’ve heard people many times quote the definition of insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Well guess what? If we don’t think about it, that is precisely what we end up doing.