T he Introduction pointed out that most failures are simply challenges in progress. Whether these challenges ever arrive at success often depends on the strength and experience we bring to the challenge from struggling with past setbacks and failures.
Recently, a colleague e-mailed a revealing story that was circulating on the Internet about a butterfly. In the story, a man is watching a butterfly struggle to break out of its cocoon. After making some progress to work its way through a small hole, the butterfly appeared to simply stop its efforts. For some time it seemed to make no headway, so the man concluded it was stuck and decided to lend a helping hand by forming a larger opening in the cocoon with scissors. Afterward the butterfly emerged easily but with small, shriveled wings and a swollen body.
It turned out that the struggle to emerge from the cocoon would have forced the fluid from the butterfly’s body into its wings, a necessary process for enabling it to fly. As a result of the man’s well-intentioned “help” he had interfered with nature’s life-strengthening process. The butterfly was now doomed never to fly, but to crawl around with its swollen body and shriveled wings for the rest of its life.
Many of our failures in life present us with the same kind of challenge that the butterfly faced. Learning, personal growth, skill development, courage, persistence, the potential for empathy, and a host of other desirable life assets can be gained from failing successfully. We cannot hope to become really successful in our lives unless we learn to fail well in a way that prepares us for greater success. If we get caught in the trap of trying to avoid challenge and backing away from our setbacks, we cannot learn the valuable lessons that we need to learn. If we habitually explain away our short-term failures by making excuses and covering our tracks so that we always look successful, we stunt our personal growth. We need failures in life to provide us with the opportunity to wrestle with the kind of challenge that can squeeze the life-giving fluid we need to strengthen our wings for successful flight in life.
This is apparently the reason that NASA has used significant failure as an important criterion for selecting new recruits. When they were looking for potential astronauts for the Apollo 11 lunar mission, they invited resumes from the American public. They first weeded out applicants based on academic qualifications but they still had several thousand candidates.
The next step was a very interesting one. They weeded out all candidates who had not bounced back from a significant failure at some point in their careers. One might think it would be more logical to select those whose career performance was so strong that they had never experienced significant failure. They instead actually sought those who had failed. The apparent premise was that a person who had failed and then got up again was a stronger contender then one who had never experienced failure.
Perhaps the best way to view this seemingly radical thinking at NASA would be to conclude that they wanted astronauts who had developed sufficient strength to withstand the many challenges of flying to the moon. Just like a butterfly that fully encounters the challenge of emerging from the cocoon, the ones who had struggled and recovered from failure were the ones viewed as having wings strong enough to take flight into space.
By wrestling with failure we grow strong wings for soaring to success.
Good Morning and have a great week...
