Keep Trying, Keep Failing

A quick discussion about trying to fail rather than failing to try.

Hey friends. I briefly discussed this over on my instagram account quite recently, but now that I have this new sparkly space to fill up, I could expand 🤔

I’m hurtling towards the first anniversary of Banana on Cat (😬🎉) and racking up some great experience, having pivoted from my graphic design career during Covid. It’s great to be excited about what you do after a period of unsettledness. However sometimes when I experiment, implement new learnings or launch a new product and get crickets I tend to dwell on these failures and go to negative vibesville.

Would we consider that society or our upbringing doesn’t allow for failure, creative or otherwise? That the word is historically loaded or even perhaps we only like the world to see our perceived successes.

The current social landscape craves success stories, glittering highlights, best ofs and GOATs. But what you don’t often see are the hours of practice behind the work, the failed risks you took to get there or all of the mistake sticky tape holding it altogether.

Learning to lean in and celebrate these ‘failures’ admittedly can take a lot of practice and if you are anything like me, you might make quite a few of them 😅 but I am confident that reflecting on these as opportunities to grow will move you toward your goals.

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Please note that since I wrote that post, only a couple of weeks ago, the Australian, let alone the global, economy has taken a turn and it is looking pretty bleak. People have less money, the government is discouraging spending and all of this directly impacts small business.

Does that mean there are less opportunities to learn from fails, that people will be more fearful of trying to make mistakes during this time? Well I guess that depends on what business you are in, the support mechanisms in place, and your willingness to take chances that may result in “failure”.

But perhaps this current landscape offers it own failures that we can learn from much like people did during Covid. Through trying, failing, learning and trying again, we can pivot, play and tinker at the edges of our business to find better and more resilient ways of working and hopefully strengthen our business for a healthier future.

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I would love to hear your stories of how trying and failing has helped you out in the short/long term

🍌🐈❤️

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