NEA: Everyone is familiar with the concept of failure. However bitter it may feel, failure can be a necessary step towards success. In the arts, without taking chances, artists risk not tapping into creativity that can potentially lead to great outcomes. NEA has spoken with many individual artists and art leaders in the past, from various art fields, on their relationship with failure as well as success (see our 2014 NEA Arts issue). Today, we’ve pieced together a few of their personal insights to remind you that maybe, failure isn’t so bitter after all.
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Failure is hard. I feel that from the outside it is easy to give the advice of "failure is a learning experience" but when you are the one receiving the advice, it sucks.
In school, we are told all the time that failure is a part of our growing experience, but if/when we take risks sometimes our grades do not provide support for taking more risks. Though I understand why grades are a necessary part of my educational process, I wish that our risks, that turn in to failures, were not always reflected in our grades. It is really a catch twenty two situation.
Looking back on my freshman year, I see a lot of failure and think that it will take some time to see the (hopefully) growth that has occurred over the past year. I think that instead of looking at failure as learning, we should look at our goals and set goals that are not too lofty. If we set goals that are attainable, our payoff will feel a lot more successful.
The aspect of failure that no ones talks about is judging whether not something truly is a failure. It seems self-explanatory at first, but actually this is a vital part of dealing with failure. If you have a very low threshold, you will be frustrated and lose morale very quickly. Instead of learning from your failures you will let them build up and overwhelm you, and you will be scared to make new mistakes. On the flip side, if you have a very high threshold for considering something a failure you will continuously produce sub-par work and never be able to judge whether something is the best that it could be. This is basically the same distinction (to an extreme degree) that an article last week made between conscientious and non-conscientious workers: one is detail-oriented and tries to make everything perfect while failing to see other solutions, while the other misses the fine-tuning step and creates unfinished work but more easily comes up with alternate ways to do things.
We all know that we will fail at some things. We know that failure can make us grow and we can learn from our mistakes. This article brings up nothing new, but it does bring up a good reminder. I think personally I learned a lot about myself this semester because of a big failure I had. I got a concussion the second week in this semester, and it brought about a lot of failures for myself. I did want learn a lot from it, but I think more than anything I really learned what failure is, and how to measure it. I would have small failures each day, like falling over because I was so dizzy, and at first that was the worst, but in perspective it wasn't that bad. I had a big failure when I wasn't passing 3 of my classes for mid semester grades. This was a big failure, I never got before a B in any class before in my life. But I learned a lot from, I learned to take my health seriously, and others, I also really learned about how important mental health is. I know that articles like these think they big impact, but honestly you could of told me a million more quotes about learning from failure and it wouldn't have made a difference, the actual failure makes a difference. So just accept failure will happen.
Well there isn't a ton of substance to this article, considering its mostly quotes. But failure is something that after this year I have a lot of experience with, and it is something that I was considering talking a lot about at my crit this year. I think failure is a very important part of learning how to do anything. We fail a walking hundreds of times before we can walk, we fail at tying our shoes, and learning multiplication tables, but some how as we get older, when we fail there are much greater consequences. When I can't tie my shoe, I just try again, but when I don't know the answer to a question in a meeting I get fired, or lose a client or some other thing that means something important. All that being said I am not sure that reading quotes from famous people helps someone learn how to fail, but failing certainly does. I have learned more about myself in the last 8 months than I did my whole life, and it wasn't because I was good at everything, its being everything was really hard and I had to fail because I needed to learn. Failing is an integral part of life, and anyone who isn't failing, isn't trying hard enough.
One thing that isn't brought up a lot when failure is discussed is the importance to recognize failure. It's interesting because after reading this article I noticed that I've never really thought about what is my definition/standard of failure. I think a huge part of failure and how it allows people to grow is recognizing the fact that you have failed and you need to make changes to yourself in order to improve. If you fail 100 times but you don't think you've failed, you won't improve at all. In school we have set standards like grades to inform us if we are doing well or if we are literally failing, but in real life we won't get grades and we will have to judge ourselves and if something we do is a failure or not. It's interesting how someone in this article said that she doesn't think she has encountered any failures as an artist, which is certainly good for her mental health but this definitely makes me wonder how she is growing as an artist over the years and whether she is able to be successful with that mindset or not.
I think what Sophie mentioned above me is very poignant: the fact that "if you fail 100 times but you don't think you've failed, you won't improve at all." I never thought of looking at failure through those lens but now that she mentioned it, it really is true. I think failing is crucial because you will always learn more from failing than from succeeding 100% every single time. “Failure…it’s actually a good thing. I think failure is information. And the fact that you even know that something is wrong is a wonderful success in itself. It’s all just about getting better and it’s more about process than the result.” This was one particular quote that stood out to me; it ties back to what Sophie mentioned previously, that you must be self-aware in the first place in order to get any better as an artist. If you don't know what or how you're failing (but to everyone else around you, you clearly are), then we've got a HUGE problem. Failure is certainly a daunting thing to experience because it means you didn't live up to your own expectations and perhaps others too. Failure always sucks in the moment but I think that the strength in recognizing and acknowledging your failure is the best thing you can do. It shows that you have your ego in check and that you are open to learning. The moment you're closed off to learning and that you feel like you've learned everything there is to learn, your creative soul has died.
I think that failure is really a really difficult subject to talk about. Sure, pretty much everyone says that failure is good for your growth, and that you aren’t succeeding if you haven't failed but, like Jake, I believe that there aren’t really measures in place in school or in the arts in general to make failing a learning experience without some great detriment. I think that the only way someone takes risks is that they are confident enough in themselves to succeed, and that the consequences of failing are not too great. There are the outside consequences, such as grades and keeping your job, as well as the internal consequence. I feel like the internal consequences, the terrible feelings that come along with failure, are much worse and are the real caveats to risk. I think that even though there is a general culture that say’s that it’s fine to fail, it really needs to work on making this a reality, within ourselves and without.
I think the project which has really driven home the importance of constructive, productive failure for me this year has undoubtedly been Rube. Looking back at it now, at a machine which required us as a class to work again and again and again to solve every problem it presented to us every time it crashed and burned - there is no truer parallel for the artistic process. Every time we ran that machine, whether it got all the way to the last step or didn't make it past the first, we found at least some small success and some smaller failure which informed the next reset, the next run, and the next run after that. It wasn't that those incomplete runs weren't successful - it's just that they weren't as successful as they could have been. They still taught us something and we still grew from it. And in the end, completing the machine wasn't the true triumph - as much as it may have felt like it. Spending an entire 24 hours in a room together, going through a process step by literal step, trouble-shooting and innovating as a team and as individuals - that was the win. As much hell as it put us through, as many tears were shed and hours lost, there is no more perfect metaphor for the artistic, collaborative process that theatre presents to us. It is definitely easier to think this in retrospect and hard even now to see myself write, but I am thankful to have experienced the process of Rube. All things considered, it was a type of learning that I will never forget.
School is often described as our chance to fail as artists. To really experiment before we go out into the professional world and find our next job. As a designer though it doesn’t always feel that way. There is a lot of pressure to do something well or successfully. Even before we talk about actual shows which I’m sure bring a whole new level of needing to be successful with at least most of your choices. I have often struggled to find the time to fail and start over with a project before it is due. It’s a skill I certainly haven’t mastered but I also am getting better at not committing to the first idea that pops into my head. Sometimes I end up right back at the same idea but I hope that I at least gain a little perspective by exploring other options for a few days or hours.
On the topic of Failure, i can tell you that I rarely think of myself as failing anything. I am not saying that I do nothing wrong and everything is perfect. I am saying that with the many things that don't work out for me ("failures"), there is always something gained. This probably because of the way I was brought up, but I was always given the chance to choose whether or not I had failed or not. Maybe not in the literal sense for like a class test or quiz, but more for life. As an artist, there have been so many times where I wasn't successful. Many projects this year can definitely highlight that. But the fact that I wasn't successful, didn't mean that i failed. It just meant that I made discoveries on how not to do something, or how to make it better in the future. All in all, I believe failure to be when you aren't successful... and QUIT. That's when you fail, when you stop trying.
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