Wrong Employer
Some people are simply better suited to self-employment than to working for a company. Figuring out that there's an entrepreneur lurking in your soul can be the solution to a long string of unhappy jobs.
Hollywood movie producer David Brown, whose credits include such blockbusters as Jaws and Cocoon, considers himself an expert on the subject of failure. Brown was fired from four jobs (including two top posts at 20th Century Fox) before figuring out that he's too much of a risk-taker for conventional corporate life.
Once he came to that realization, he formed his own production company where he's free to be as creative and daring as he chooses. But it took four failed tries as a "wage slave" to figure out that he couldn't find the solution to his employment problems in corporate America.
Of course, he'll never repeat that same employment mistake if he can help it. As former baseball catcher and sportscaster Joe Garagiola says: "Experience is mistakes you won't make anymore."
Hubris
Harry Truman once said, "The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all."
Success can be a powerful aphrodisiac, especially when ac-companied by money, fame and power. It can lure you into thinking you're omnipotent: that nothing and no one can touch you.
Witness the case of boxer Mike Tyson, who didn't have the character or inner strength to handle his own success. Behold also the downfalls of Jim Bakker, Leona Helmsley, Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky, all of whom have had the opportunity to contemplate the error of their ways from inside a jail cell.
Prison time must have its pluses: Boesky found God and professes to want to be a rabbi, Tyson converted to Islam, Milken discovered the joys of public service and has been seen escorting poor kids to baseball games, while Bakker has repented for his sins and wants his pulpit back to try again. Ms. Helmsley, on the other hand, seems sorry most of all that she got caught.
The Watergate folks also seemed to find religion in the wake of their downfall. Whether these religious conversions are real remains to be seen. Being humbled by defeat (and finding out that, no, you aren't God) can motivate you to search for and discover the true source of omnipotence.
Similarly hard lessons in humility were learned by hundreds of financiers on the traumatic day the stock market crashed in 1987. That event forever altered these capitalists' understanding of their own power and place in the world.
Too much, too soon has also been the downfall of many entrepreneurs who failed, in some fundamental way, to anticipate and prepare for success.
Inexperience
Because entrepreneurs take so many risks through uncharted territory, it's not surprising that they experience a fair share of failures.
When Inc. magazine compiled its latest list of the 500 fastest growing private companies in America, they discovered that the founders of these businesses usually needed a few tries to get it right. Many had started out in different enterprises, and of those initial start-ups, one-third died untimely deaths. One-half were sold. The founders didn't hit on the right formulas immediately, but they lived (nonetheless) to sell another day.
Sometimes, inexperience is a simple consequence of youth- especially in fields such as sports and entertainment where children can become overnight stars.
Perhaps Michael Jordan's greatest skill isn't sports, but his ability to learn and persevere. After all, he was hardly a candidate for the fast track to stardom as a youngster. He was a funny-looking kid who avoided girls. Nor was school his forte. Skipping classes and avoiding homework were prime motivations.
He found salvation in basketball. He felt the game was his destiny and played constantly until he was cut from the team his sophomore year in high school. That failure only fueled his hunger to achieve.
During his first six years as an NBA player (a time he refers to as "my learning tree"), he studied the leadership style of such players as Julius Erving, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. His focus on developing his skills-one by one-has always been an important key to his success. He knows how to build an intimate knowledge of his subject matter. Mastering the activity is its own reward. This is something we know as children but often forget as adults.
The experience of one very determined five-year-old reminds us of this statement's truth. In a valiant effort to learn how to ride a bike, the girl would get on, go forward for a few seconds and fall off. Then, she would try again. And again. And again. And again.
Long after she'd exhausted her poor father's physical and emotional energy, she was still trying. Finally, he went inside the house to read the newspaper and refresh himself while she kept practicing.
Sometime later, a remarkably dirty (but clearly happy) child tugged at her father's arm until she had his whole attention, and then said: "You ride and you fall off. You ride and you fall off. You ride and you fall off. "You ride . . . and you ride . . . and you ride . . . and you ride."
Bad Timing
Some of failure's best lessons are in the realm of self-knowledge. All that soul-searching anchors information in ways which are both memorable and character-building.
Remember Dan Jansen, the Olympic speed skater whose sister Jane died of leukemia on the day of his 500-meter race in Calgary in 1988? Had the fates been kind, Jansen would have won that 500-meter race he dedicated to his sister, or at least the 1,000-meter race he skated four days later. Instead, he stumbled twice and went down in defeat.
You can write his mistakes off to grief and be partly right. But it wasn't just sadness that made him stumble. It was fear of success, too, and possibly survivor's guilt. He just didn't feel right celebrating a victory so soon after his sister's death. It was more important to mourn her passing.
Six years later, he felt more ready and deserving of the honor. In fact, he felt worthy enough to set a new Olympic world record in the 1,000-meter race at Lillehammer and to take victory laps with his daughter Jane nestled in his arms.
While such well-deserved victories are obviously heart-warming, Jansen believes that the battle to accomplish your goals is more important than any medal or award.
Some of his fans agree.
One of his favorite post-Olympian memories came from a well-wisher who told him: "You would've been a hero whether you won the race or not." Like Jansen, she believed that his ability to persist in the face of adversity was every bit as admirable as the medal. Jansen's father agrees, saying that the way his son handles his defeats is every bit as impressive as the way he handles victory.
This is not about being a good loser. It is about the dignity of wholehearted commitment and effort.
Prejudice
Some failures are the result of ignorance-not your own, but other people's. Such ignorance typically reveals itself in the form of racism, sexism or ageism.
A successful accountant in Philadelphia was his employer's "favorite son" right up until the day the company discovered he was gay and summarily discharged him. What resulted was a down-and-dirty lawsuit that the accountant eventually lost. But in the process, he gained something more important: a sense of integrity. Never again would he hide his sexual orientation. He vowed that from then on, he'd always live an openly homosexual life.
He also decided to establish his own practice. He was gratified to discover that most clients care little about their accountant's sexual orientation and a great deal about his or her ability to save them tax dollars. This knowledge made him much more secure about his professional future and place in the human community.
For people who have felt the need to hide their religion, sexual preferences, age or other sensitive information from their employers, to have that information come out into the open can be liberating, even if they end up losing a job as a result (which hopefully they won't).
While how much personal information you reveal should always be your choice, you won't always have that luxury. Should you find yourself on the wrong end of prejudice and ignorance, you can use it to affirm your essential values. Standing up for who you are and what you believe can armor you with self-knowledge and resiliency that will make it difficult for anyone to successfully undermine you.
So the next time someone doesn't like who you are or what you stand for, remember that it's really their problem, not yours. They're entitled to what they believe, but their beliefs can't diminish you unless somewhere deep down you think they're right.
