Do You Believe in Failure?

Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 08:00pm by Gina Laverde in Life

If you believe in failure then failure is a possibility in your career. But, if you accept the fact that things don’t always turn out exactly as you’ve planned – then you can change what others label as failure into the building blocks of your career.

Entrepreneurs are mold breakers and we are probably not going to ace all of the world’s tests. But, our ability to morph negativity into experience and profit helps us to move beyond that dingy little desk in “the man’s” office.

I decided that I wanted to be a writer when I was in fifth grade. I’d known since I was eight, but made the final decision at 11. And, it was at that time that my parents started receiving phone calls and failure notices from my teachers: “she talks too much in class.” “She lied on her English essay” (I’d written a story about how my grandpa taught me how to ride a bike just before he passed away – and how I felt him with me every time I rode that bike). I also stopped trying to even do my math and science homework.

After being on the nerdy math team and winning my city science fair two years in a row – I decided to focus on doing what I loved. I made up stories and plays—and sold tickets to them. Pretty soon I was failing half my courses in school, acing the other half and making about 100 bucks a month doing odd jobs and selling tickets to my neighborhood plays.

There’s never been a middle ground for me. And I’ve never cared much for the world’s grading system. I stopped getting grounded for my hard-headedness after my parents realized I wasn’t going to change.

I graduated from High school as the Vice President of the National Honor Society. But I flunked gym. This was because I refused to get into their disgusting swimming pool. I told them to clean the pool and remove the asbestos or fail me. They failed me.

In college – professors often asked me why I wasn’t doing better in their classes. I would respond that I was there for the overall learning experience, and that sometimes it was necessary for me to create my own rules. This did not sit well with some of them.

As an adult – I’ve racked up tons of debt, started a few bombed businesses, totaled a car that wasn’t mine, gotten stranded in deep south Mississippi, nearly lost my house, missed deadlines, trusted the wrong people – all things that cause certain people to roll their eyes.

I live amongst people who don’t even want to understand. They thrive on my failure and believe that I’m failing. But, as a writer – I am able to take my crazy experiences and turn them into stories. As a boss – I am able to take my trust problems and morph them into great communication skills. As a mom and wife, I am able to take my passed “failures” and use then to improve my troubleshooting skills.

As a kid I often wondered why it seemed that others had it so easy. Why my own cousins and friends never received failure notices or got grounded. As a teenager I wondered why none of my girl friends ever got as broken hearted over boys as I did. I was never really jealous – just curious. And, after my high school sweetheart broke my heart – my mother told me to stop wondering. “You’re unique,” she said. “You care more. You love more. You try harder. And for that – you may suffer more. But you will also be rewarded greater.”

Pretty deep huh? Chew on it for a bit. It makes sense.

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