CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, September 12, 2007

How to Fail at Practically Anything

lifehack.org: "I say, fail a lot. Push yourself to the limits of your talents, endurance, and common sense, and then go one step further and fall down, spectacularly if possible. Failure is one of life’s great forces; it’s driven far more innovation than talent, creativity, or necessity combined. Plus, its stories are better."

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I fell in love with this comment while reading this article- "How we fail is at least as important as how we succeed. "

I think that is very important because there are a lot of times where I fail at things and I have a tendency to just give up. Say I am up to bat with bases loaded and the crowd is waiting for me to take the hit. Instead, I strike out and go back into the dug out disappointed. At that moment, I never want to touch a at again. Now I realize that those failures help me savor the victories even more. Life is full of ups and downs. we are on a constant roller coaster and we're in for a ride.

KAP said...

A very informative article, especially for those of us at CMU Drama. We all fail to realize that this is one of the places where failure might not be so bad. That failure is the biggest of all learning opportunities. One can learn so much more from failure than from success.

Anonymous said...

Dick preached this idea many times last year. Often he would tell us to take our ideas as far as we can. The worst thing that can happen is that someone say that they do not like it or it will not work. Then we can properly adjust.

Anonymous said...

Failure likely means our incapability. I think people are afraid of failure perhaps is because of his childhood experience. If we failed the exam, our parents would scold us and said “Why are you so stupid and make such simple error?” Then when we grow up, we might still fear the failure; even dare not face it and then escape~ This article offers the useful tips to conquer this kind of attitude. Indeed, we need to stand up in where we fall down, learn from the experience and particularly DO NOT repeat the thing causing failure.

Anonymous said...

How often do we tell ourselves to dare to fail 3 times in a day? Definately not even once in days for me.

I would love to have someone tell me to come out of the box, to step into the light. I remember during my admissions interview at CMU a few months back, I said I want to come to a place where I can fail and learn things from it, instead of always afraid of making mistakes.

This is definately a good reminder for me...

maddie regan said...

The innate fear of failure in everyone is hard to conquer. It's true that by failing you learn a lot, but the ramifications of failure include a lot more than "it was a good learning experience." My fear of failure is best exemplified by my unwillingness to participate in class. I like to hear and not be heard. Maybe I don't want people to know I don't understand something, or don't want to be labled as dumb, but I just don't do it. And I've realized this is stupid, and am making an effort to change it.

shupcey said...

I've always had this fear of failure. And it ultimately held me back. This year however, I feel like I'm starting to feel a lot better and I'm trusting myself. And as a result I;m not failing more, but succeeding more. Because spending so much time worrying about failing causes you to fail, as opposed to just doing the job. And if you succeed - awesome, if not, learn from it, and do it right next time.