The Myth of Success and Failure (and the Feedback Loop)
"The fear of success is real. First of all, we have to cut loose all the "friends" who had a stake in our ongoing misery. They'd never admit it, but our stagnation has been a comfort to them. So you have to leave the wing clippers behind."
We are limited by success and failure. Boxed in by perfectionism, the fear of failure hounds us. Less well advertised is the fear of success. But Nelson Mandela was right: what we fear most is our own potential.
What appears to be a “failure” rarely is. Most failures are useful feedback loops, carrying valuable information about what we are good at and what we are not. When we develop a comfort level with that loop, not getting too down when the crickets chirp and not too high when somebody kisses our butts, we can move into a continual state of improvement.
The end result? We stop taking the world so personally. Ironically, it’s the freedom from approval that results in superior work. Those who are comfortable out on that limb, unconcerned with conventional success, have a strangely better chance of finding it. The material world tends to reward people who have become exceptional. And you become that way through a very unromantic and non-magical process called trial and error.
Dig into the biographies: most people worth admiring confronted failure early and often. The sports world is filled with “cut from the team” stories. As a freshman, Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school basketball team. Tom Brady was drafted in the sixth round. So many great champions made their run after a worthy foe exposed their weaknesses.
Many who fear failure are very “successful” by professional standards. But they are not successful at the thing they love the most. The guitar is still in the closet. The “someday” business never got further than a half-finished business plan which now sits under a houseplant. As mortgages kick in, we become competent at careers like restaurant management or software sales. We cling to those competencies like life rafts. But when it comes time to take a chance on something we always wanted, there’s a LOT more at stake. It’s better to be a legend in our own minds than to be exposed as mediocre.
I have friends like that - folks with so much to say who are afraid to write because they don’t know where to begin. They are so daunted by the brilliance of their favorite books that they can’t go further than a blank computer screen. The older you get, the more painful that empty screen gets. I spent so many years afraid to start writing that I almost didn’t start at all. So we find other projects to obsess about, like the overgrowth in our backyards. Fill our lives with enough clutter, and we are reassured: “I don’t have time to write a book.” Isn’t that better than finally making the time to do it, only to write a bad one?
What we forget is that being “bad” is part of becoming good. Legend has it that Stephen King tossed his first book in the trash. Some would say he should have tossed the rest of his books too. I don’t agree, but it’s an example of why we must please ourselves first. If other people sign on, so much the better. The critics will kick and scream either way. The better you do, the louder they tend to holler.
The fear of success is an even more baffling phenomenon. When I bring it up, the barstool response is: “Fear of success? What the f are you talking about?” But the fear of success is real. First of all, to nab the big dreams, we have to cut loose all the “friends” who had a stake in our ongoing misery. They’d never admit it, but our stagnation has been a comfort to them. So you have to leave the wing clippers behind. It may be freeing to take the leap, but there are reasons to fear success. Even when change is for the best, there is a sadness to the process. It’s hard to let go of the old gang, but more often than not, stepping into our own means doing just that.
But our friends are nothing compared to ourselves. Living audaciously means junking comfortable “old shoe” habits. A night of drinking with our homies is a lot more appealing than a night in the lab, working on ventures that highlight all of our shortcomings. There are nights where I am convinced that this book is utter crap. It is all I can do to keep going. I have turned down a lot of beer to find the time to make this happen. “Comfortably numb” is more pleasant than the raw experience of struggling towards outrageous goals. Being the best we can be is hard work. More often than not, we are our own worst enemies. We fear success because of how much it demands of us. If we are capable of so much, then why do we settle for so little?
The toughest critics we battle are inside of our own heads. When we take a step towards greatness, the critics in our own head chime in, telling us we don’t have what it takes. I haven’t found a way to shut those voices up, but I have learned how to keep going.
It’s not easy to face all the ways we held ourselves back. In college, I turned my back on a writing career, playing it safe with a pre-law curriculum instead. Trying to reclaim this career in mid-life is taking everything I can muster. The hardest part? Making a peace with my own disappointment.
I hope that this book can make a difference in two ways: by inspiring people to act, and by giving them a “game plan.” Too often, we’re naively encouraged to chase our dreams but not provided with a strategy that acknowledges what we’re up against. Hopefully, concepts like the feedback loop will convince some folks to give it another shot: armed with a better strategy, we should have a better outcome. And in terms of tactics, there’s nothing in this book more valuable than using the feedback loop to move beyond perfectionism.
The marketplace provides invaluable feedback each time we enter it. But the big reward of the feedback loop is psychological. Eventually you get into a groove. You get used to putting your work out there. While you are curious about what people think, you aren’t defined by it. On a certain level, you just don’t care anymore. Not because the feedback isn’t useful - it is. You don’t care because you are free from the paralysis of attaching your self-worth to a project. You understand that success is a process, and the process happens by putting work out there, even when it’s flawed. In Zen terms, you embrace the “beginner’s mind” and learn to love the learning curve. The more at peace you are with your own awkwardness, the more you can learn. At least that’s what I tell myself every week at my “back to square one” guitar lesson.
The feedback loop is the market’s way of letting you know which ideas resonate. What we hear back is not usually what we wanted to hear, but we ignore the loop at our peril. To this day, the most common emails about my writing are from SAP consultants looking for career advice. I would prefer that my writing on unsung ’80s metal gods was what people responded to most, but it just hasn’t happened. My music journalism is the best writing I have ever done, but the feedback loop has been clear: the market values my SAP writing more.
That feedback is a horse pill, but it is invaluable. So what do I do with that information? Does it mean I stop writing about unsung hair bands? Nope - couldn’t if I tried. But if I think the hair band book is going to put me on a yacht, I am pretty naïve.
So, I will continue to use my SAP knowledge, which the feedback loop has certified as marketable, to finance other projects. I’ll keep doing the hair band tributes, but not too often. I’m in a crucial phase where I need to boost revenues. The more money you have in the bank, the more you can err on the side of your own interests. But I’m at a point where I need to find a middle ground between my passions and what the market will pay for. This book is another experiment along those lines. I’m not sure what the feedback loop will prove.
Those who contend money can’t buy happiness are correct, to a point. Studies have shown that beyond survival, money has a diminishing return, becoming less important than community, family, and romantic love. But money is still a big part of success; it reduces our dependence on amoral institutions beyond our direct control. In a market economy, money defines the terms of engagement. Money allows us to finance ambition and send a few kids to school. So there is a connection between success and finance, but it’s not as absolute as some would contend.
There is something to be said for mastering your craft. That kind of expertise leads to whatever people call “success.” Money is a part of that. If it’s not, then we probably ignored the feedback loop. That’s ok, we can still make changes - if not to our focus, then to how it is marketed. You can often redefine your area of mastery without giving up the essence of the project. Example: you run a popular web site. You decide to keep the content free but to place advertisements on it. You might prefer to go ad free, but this gives you a better chance of funding your life. Strike your own balance.
A “successful” person is someone who has rejected success and failure in favor of an ongoing process of mastery. If you can do that while being good to those around you, you have a chance of being one of life’s rock stars. By the time others start calling you successful, it won’t even matter anymore. If making it big is overrated, then it’s time to glamorize the humble process of becoming the best person you can be, beyond success and failure.
