Failing to be Successful

You probably know people who aren’t afraid to take risks. They seem to have a continual flow of ideas for new products and services. Many of their designs never become reality, but it fuels their desire to create the next one, and the one after that.

Then you also may know people who just want to be successful. They shy away from undertakings that may be a failure. These people could be described as boring and predictable. Their opinion of themselves is that they may not have reached the highest level of success, but they didn’t fail either.

But the exceptional people are the ones who are a combination of not being afraid to fail and striving for success. One of those people is Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip Dilbert. He gives a summary of his climb to success in his new book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.

I don’t gravitate toward the Dummy series books or for that matter any book that says it is an Idiots Guide to anything. So, I would not have chosen a book that has the premise of failing, for my reading pleasure. Scott wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal about his new book. I was intrigued by the concept and decided to download a free excerpt. It was captivating and rather humorous so I purchased the book.

Two of the concepts he presented rocked my world. The first was about pursuing your passion. He wrote, “So forget about passion. And while you're at it, forget about goals, too.” He continues on by explaining that people feel passionate about something and then when it doesn’t make money, the passion fades. Passion is not a good business strategy.

The second idea, counter to my past thinking, is that goals that aren’t achieved make us feel like failures. And when we feel like failures we don’t want to try anything new. He said, “My system of creating something the public wants and reproducing it in large quantities nearly guaranteed a string of failures.” If he had been goal focused he would have given up before Dilbert was created. I was enjoying the book and I wanted to share it.

For today’s gift I bought a digital copy and sent it to my friend who isn’t afraid to try new things and fail. I know that one day he will hit it big with one of his really cool ideas—all because he has learned to fail his way to success.

In Giving and learning to fail my way to success,

Robin