A Time to Lose, A Time to Heal
"Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday." – Wilma Rudolph
Today is my birthday. Last night I thought: "If this were to be my last birthday, what are some of the things I would I like my posterity to know?"
One of those things I'd like my children and grandchildren to know is how to fail well. In fact, I believe that failing well is one of the essential life-lessons we all should learn, and the better we learn it, the better off we'll be.
Why? Well, because everyone fails from time to time. We all lose. But not everyone learns how to make losing eventually work to their benefit.
Don't get me wrong — I'm not saying we should lose. I'm just saying that when we fail, and then fail to learn and grow from the experience, we’ve actually lost twice.
"When we fail, and then fail to learn and grow from the experience, we’ve actually failed twice."
I absolutely adore this story Professor Tyler J. Jarvis told in a BYU devotional:
When my kids first started ice-skating lessons, they were unable to stand on their skates without help and clung to the little walkers that were available at the arena for non-skaters. Even with the little walkers they fell often.
They were surprised when the first thing the instructor did was to take away the walkers and teach them to fall.
They practiced falling over and over.
One of my daughters complained that falling was the one thing she could do without lessons or help.
But once they had finished their falling lesson they could skate — almost as if by magic. And they didn’t even fall much after that. By overcoming their fear of falling, by embracing the fall, they were able to learn to avoid it and were able to try new things without fear. (Emphasis added).
Success tends to come easier to those who are not afraid to fail. And the best way to not be afraid of failure is to know that you can fail skillfully and without serious harm.
So practice failing well — whether it's being a gracious loser in sports or games, or rebounding from a disappointing grade, or being cheerful even when you didn't get the interest of that person you've wanted to date, or being positive when you didn't get that job you are sure you are great for.
That practice will make you into someone who will more readily find success in the future.
Ronald Wayne
Are you familiar with the story of Ronald Wayne?
While working as an engineer at Atari (a video game company) in the 1970s, Ron Wayne started a slot machine business that failed. By all accounts, Ron Wayne handled this failure with unimpeachable integrity. In fact, not only did he work to pay back all his company’s debts, but he also paid back all his investors as well so that no one was harmed by the failed venture.
In his words, “It was my fault it failed, not theirs, and I didn’t want anyone to be out any money because of me.”
Ron had a friend at Atari named Steve. One day Steve came to Ron looking for his wisdom in helping him solve what Steve considered to be a big problem. Ron agreed to help. Steve introduced Ron to another young man named Steve, and together the three them solved the problem.
In fact, the three were so impressed with themselves that they decided to form a company together. Ron brought out his typewriter and typed up the contract and the three of them signed. Each Steve owned 45% of the of the company, and Ron, the “philosophical tiebreaker” owned 10%.
And with those three signatures, Apple Computer was born.
So why isn’t Ron Wayne as famous as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak?
Despite the evidence Ron had that the three of them were an effective team, Ron began to focus instead on what a terrible ordeal his recent business failure had been. Ron Wayne let his doubts get the better of him so he dropped out of Apple just 12 days after he helped form it.
By the way, contrary to popular belief, doubt is not a lack of confidence; doubt is confidence — confidence in the outcome opposite of what you are striving for.
Doubt is not a lack of confidence; doubt is confidence in the outcome opposite of what you are striving for.
Ron Wayne allowed himself to grow more confident in the possibility that he just might be creating another serious financial obligation to work off.
That certainly could have happened, but Ron's recent business experience made him smarter now. Plus now Ron had two business partners with high drive and expertise. Surely, the trio would have a much better chance of succeeding than his previous solo endeavor ever had. But that's just not where Ron's mind was.
Ron learned the wrong thing from his failure: not to risk again.
Much to the disappointment of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Ronald Wayne sold his 10% stake in Apple back to them for $800.
Steve Wozniak later said, "Never once did Steve Jobs or myself utter anything negative about Ron. We were surprised when he decided to forego Apple."
Ron probably felt good about leaving at the time. After all, he just made an easy $800 in 12 days. However, those shares would have been worth about $300 billion as of January 3, 2022.
By the way, in the early 1990s, Ronald Wayne sold the document he typed up that formed Apple — signed by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and himself — for $500.
In 2011, that same piece of paper sold at auction for $1.6 million.
“In that, you have the story of my life,” Wayne says.
Today Ron lives in a humble mobile home park in Pahrump, Nevada, living off of his very modest social security checks. His life savings was stolen in a break-in and he had to sell his house to recover.
To be clear, I do NOT see Ron Wayne as a loser.
In fact, everything I see and read indicates that Ronald Wayne seems to have succeeded in building a rich character — which sadly some people of great wealth seem to lack. Our world could use more Ron Waynes, I think.
But at the same time, wouldn’t Ron Wayne have made a wonderfully benevolent billionaire?
Perhaps the only thing the world needs more than more good people, is more good people among those with wealth and power.
The respect Steve Jobs had for Ronald Wayne is evident in the fact that in 2000, Jobs invited Ron to attend a presentation of new Macs at Apple headquarters. Ron received first-class plane tickets. He was driven from the airport to the luxurious Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco by Steve Jobs’ chauffeur.
Then after the conference, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne ate a long lunch at Apple’s cafeteria and reminisced about old times.
Steve Blank
On February 23, 2013, one of my favorite business writers and speakers, Steve Blank, published an article on Forbes.com called “Failure and Redemption.”
In it, Professor Blank writes that there are 6 stages of failure to live through:
- Stage 1: Shock and Surprise
- Stage 2: Denial
- Stage 3: Anger and Blame
- Stage 4: Depression
- Stage 5: Acceptance
- Stage 6: Insight and Change
In the article Steve tells about his experience as CEO of a new startup video game company called “Rocket Science.” For them, failure did not seem possible. He raised $35 million. In their first 18 months Rocket Science was the cover story for Wired Magazine. It was hailed as “one of the hottest companies in Silicon Valley.”
Stage 1: Shock and Surprise
Just 90 days after Rocket Science appeared on the cover of Wired, it was apparent to Steve that no one was buying their video games. With 120 employees, Rocket Science was burning cash like a rocket burns fuel. Their top engineers started leaving the company.
Stage 2: Deny any of it was your fault
“In my mind,” Steve wrote, “I had done everything the investors asked me to do. I raised a ton of money and got a ton of press. We hired everyone according to our plan. It was everyone else who screwed up. I did everything right.”
Stage 3: Get angry and blame everyone else
At the time it seemed right to Steve to blame others. It was the cofounder’s fault: he was in charge of product development. It was the engineers’ fault for bailing. It was the venture capitalists’ vault for not giving more money. It was Sega’s fault for building a bad gaming platform, etc.
Stage 4: Get depressed
Steve wrote that as the gravity of his failure sunk in, he stayed in bed and lost interest in things he used to love — to the point that to this day he still cannot play a video game.
Stage 5: Gradually accept your role in the failure
Over time, and with the help of his wife, Steve began to think of the things he could have done and did not.
“I often reverted to Stages 2 and 3, but over time I took ownership of my primary role in the debacle.”
Stage 6: Gain insight and change your behavior
“This was the hardest part,” he wrote. “While I stopped blaming others, understanding what I could change in my behavior took long months.”
After Steve Blank went through this six-step process for healing from his devastating failure, he started another company which he sold three years later. I couldn't find the exact numbers, but it looks like Steve exited with hundreds of millions of dollars.
Since then, Steve Blank has been authoring books on startups, and teaching entreprenership at Berkley, Stanford, and Columbia. I recommend his works to anyone who owns — or is thinking of owning — a business.
Incidentally, you know how Steve Blank's first company was called "Rocket Science"? I wonder if, when times got tough with his second company, Steve ever told himself, "I can do this; it's not Rocket Science!" 😂 (Your dad joke for the day.)
No Shortcuts
Just as baseball players have to touch all the bases before they can score, when we fail, we have to pass through all six stages to cope with failure in a healthy way.
That seems obvious, nevertheless there are a LOT of people who will tell you to not feel badly when you fail; just skip all the stages and just feel better. They'll tell you that we should not let ourselves feel guilt or shame about things we've done — even when our decisions harmed others.
After all, you "deserve to be happy."
I totally, absolutely, 100% agree that we should not wallow in self-pity, nor should we flog ourselves over our mistakes to the point that we're so impaired that we struggle thereafter.
Of course we all deserve to be happy — but why would anyone think they "deserve" something they haven't earned?
Why would anyone think they deserve something they haven't earned?
And by the way, the people we affect with our mistakes deserve to be happy too.
Quoting from Ecclesiastes 3:1, 6, 3 (emphasis added):
1 "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
6 "A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;"
3 "... and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up"
The whole point of weight training is to break down your muscles with as much adversity as they can handle, so they can heal and build up stronger.
"No pain, no gain" they say.
Pain is an indispensable part of the process of getting stronger, so we should not always avoid it.
Years ago, back when YouTube just started supporting livestreaming, I was doing my first-ever livestreaming of a conference. And man was I was stressed out.
About 100 people were in the venue, and about 600 were watching live remotely — which was a big number in those early days of streaming. It was all so new, and the conference venue's network was iffy. It felt like things could go wrong at any second, and I was not at all sure I could fix them if they did.
And boy did I not want to disappoint anyone.
In the middle of that pressure, my phone buzzed. It was my youngest daughter. I could not take a call in those circumstances, so I let it go to voice mail.
Then she called again. I let it go to voicemail and was in the process of texting her when she called again.
This time I answered and whispered, "Please hold a moment."
I asked someone in the crowd to please watch the screens for me, then I ducked out of the conference room.
My mind was racing.
I was so worried.
She just recently got her driver's license.
What if it was a medical professional using her phone to call me?
When I got to a private place in the corridor, I said into the phone, "This is Tom."
What followed was my 16-year old girl in full-throated sobs.
I tried to remain calm and give her the time she needed to gain her composure so she could tell me what had happened.
In a moment or two she calmed herself to the point where she could talk.
"Dad," she said through sniffles, "I just got a speeding ticket."
Frankly, I cannot tell you how glad I was to learn that she got a speeding ticket, and that no one had died in the process.
I assured her that it's okay. I told her that I love her and that I'm not mad. Then I asked what happened.
As she told the story, I noticed that emotionally she switched from being sad to being angry. She blamed the police officer who pulled her over — after all, everyone else was going the same speed she was! He was just picking on her and trying to embarrass her.
As the story progressed, it was clear that, to her, the moral of the story was that she was a victim.
"Please don't do that," I said quietly.
"Do what?" she asked.
"Please don't shift the blame."
"Even if you are 100% right and the officer singled you out to pull over, had you followed the law, that officer would have had to pick on someone else."
"Besides, it's actually important that you let this mistake hurt. Don't run from it by blaming someone else. Let it hurt."
"Why?!" she asked, bewildered.
"Because that pain will help you to never get a ticket ever again," I explained.
"If a mistake doesn't hurt, then it's easy to make it again. However, when a mistake really hurts, that pain can seep deep into our souls and change us. It can make us stronger — strong enough to keep a vow to never make that mistake again."
(Remember: "No pain, no gain.").
She was just 16 years old, but she seemed to completely understand what I was trying to teach her.
"You're right," she said, "I don't want to ever have a day like this again!"
Like it or not, the path of happiness is mostly uphill. This path has twists and rough patches. And at times the path crosses with other seemingly easier and more attractive paths that can tempt us to change direction.
Don't let easy fool you; choose growth instead.
This reminds me of the words Kicking Bird told John Dunbar in the movie Dances with Wolves:
"I was just thinking that of all the trails in this life, there is one that matters most. It is the trail of a true human being. I think you are on this trail, and it is good to see."
In conclusion
Of course, Ronald Wayne is not the only failure among Apple's founding fathers.
When Steve Jobs was 30 years old, he was fired from the company he co-founded.
"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me," said Steve Jobs in a speech to Stanford University graduates.
"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me." — Steve Jobs
"The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.
"It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
"During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and I fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.
"In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT. I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance.
"You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future."
"You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future." — Steve Jobs
"Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith."
Only in retrospect could Steve Jobs see a purpose in why he was hit in the head with that particular brick. Similarly, only in retrospect will you understand how the hardships you are called to pass through made you better.
Then again, if you not have learned to fail well, then the bricks that hit you are of no benefit to you at all.
Instead, you just end up personally knowing exactly what the great philosopher, anonymous, meant when he said, "Life sucks, and then you die."
One final note: sometimes our hardships are caused by others. When that is the case, please remember this quote by Bernard Meltzer:
"When you forgive, you in no way change the past — but you sure do change the future."
None of us can change the past, but most of us have the ability to use it to help us make a our futures better.
Thinking about those close to me, I've noticed that failure tends to sort us into three different groups.
The first group tries to avoid it. The problem is the only way to never fail is to never try, in which case you've failed already by default.
The second group misunderstands failure. When they fail, they think of it as who they are, rather than what they've experienced. Consequently, they walk away thinking: some can, I can't.
The third group sees failure as feedback. This is failure's true identity. Failure is a friend that whispers secrets to the teachable that it keeps from those who lay blame or envy.
In my remaining days on this planet, I hope I can teach my kids and grandchildren by word, but especially by example, that we are never permanently in any of these groups.
With every setback we encounter, we sort ourselves anew, therefore we are wisest if we decide to keep choosing group three each and every day.
Thanks for listening.
Links:
Jeremy Lichtman
Richard Blackden
