Failure Club

🤔 Why playing it safe is the real failure

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko

There is a direct connection between success (of any kind) and a willingness to fail. They’re allies, not enemies.

Sara Blakey (founder of Spanx) shares a profound question her father used to ask. Rather than “How’d everything go at school?” or “What are you working on?” he’d ask,

“What did you fail at this week?”

In other words, what did you risk to learn something new? How far out of your comfort zone did you wander this week? Where are the bruises from falling flat on your face?

I’m not suggesting this question is why Sara Blakely went on to bootstrap a hosiery brand worth more than a billion dollars, but it couldn’t have hurt. I imagine this was just one of the seeds in the soil that grew the creative resilience to work through self-doubt, rejection, and the logistical nightmares of building something significant.

Accepting failure is one thing. Exploring failure is a wholly different game.

Blakely’s father reframed failed attempts as proof of courage. If she had nothing to report, it wasn’t a relief—it was a missed opportunity.

My comfort-hungry brain usually asks, “How do I avoid failure?” I should ask, “What gold can I mine from my mistakes?”

What about you? What did you fail at this week? And please leave out the modest, sanitized “failures” that feel safe to share. Reach for those raw, ego-bruising missteps and miscalculations.

If nothing comes to mind, you’ve succeeded at the status quo. That’s alright. Join the club.

On second thought, let’s start a different group:

Failure Club, anyone?

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