Stage Directions: Scenic Designer Robert Mark Morgan worried a bad review would tank his career. But he pushed forward, producing imaginative sets for theaters across America and earning rave reviews in the process.Here's a video from Washington University in St. Louis, where Morgan, teaching professor of drama in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, shares how he overcame self-doubt after a devastating review
2 comments:
This idea of needing to fail better is something I think everyone should adopt as a model in their life. There is this pre-existing notion of fear as a terrible outcome which inhibits creativity and risk in a large amount of people however, from experience I know I learn much more from my failures than my successes. Learning what not to do is in some circumstances better than getting it right the first time and needing to go outside your previous knowledge and instincts makes you grow as a person. I think this idea of failing goes hand in hand with being outside your comfort zone and if your feeling uncomfortable or vulnerable it is actually a good thing because you are better equip to expand your knowledge and skills. He also mentions the idea of imposter syndrome in the video and I think that is also worth taking time to discuss, I think the biggest plague of impostor syndrome is that people don’t want to talk about not feeling like they belong for fear they’d be kicked out when in reality if they discussed it they’d realize they aren’t alone.
I think that failure is an underrated tool in order to succeed. In our world, everyone is always hyper focused on success, and think that failure is the absolute end of the world. The trick is to not let failure devastate you, as even failing on something large (as demonstrated in this article) can be recovered from, and arguably an even more valuable experience in life, as failure is something that most humans actively try not to experience, for obvious reasons. And in this article, the subject talks about “failing faster.” This is better for obvious reasons. As first, it is obviously less damaging to your career, and also, it is better to learn the lessons from failure while you still have time to correct them, and make better use of the lessons that you are able to learn. I agree with this mentality, and is something that a teacher of mine pushed for my class in sophomore year of high school. It’s okay to fail, just make sure you pick yourself up again.
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