Take the pain out of failing

A lot of us have the joy of working in Agile environments and have all read, heard and learned that you should "Fail fast and often". The idea is basically that if something isn't going to work, it's better to find out as soon as possible, and learn as much as we can from it so that we can move on and focus our energy on something that will work. It doesn't mean that we set ourselves up for failure, quite the contrary, we try to do everything we can to ensure success. The problem is that if you are working in an innovative space, or say, in a well defined space that you're looking to disrupt, it's hard to guarantee success off the bat. What's interesting to me, is that we don't like to fail. I have yet to meet someone who really relished in this. I know a lot of people who can see the value in failing, and are comfortable with the fact that it will happen and that we will learn good stuff from it. I don't see anyone celebrating when it does though. People swear, wring their hands, shake their heads, some even cry. But  I think we should celebrate. That we didn't get to where we intended to be is not important. We may well have been striving for the wrong things, or looking at it the wrong way. It was not going to work and we found out early. Surely this is good news.

The idea I think, is to focus on going forwards, without being attached to the outcome. The pain, the anger, the fear, the emotions that are so often felt during failure are those that come from that.

If we can be excited about the journey, about what we are actually doing rather than where we are expecting to end up, then we can really let go of the attachment to the outcome and enjoy this unique process. The beauty in this is that when we do succeed, the outcome is a true celebration rather than an expected situation that we take for granted.