Failure is a Process

Success never happens overnight. It only appears that way to others.

Similarly, failure doesn't happen overnight either, it only appears that way to us.

I used to think failure was an event. If I was late to work, it was because the bus took ages. I was too blinkered to go one step further and ask what would have happened if I'd left earlier.

If my blood sugar was high, I'd blame the randomness of Type 1 Diabetes, not the colossal pizza I'd had six hours earlier, which because of its monstrous fat content, would continue to deliver its relentless stream of glucose into my bloodstream many hours after consumption.

If the presentation I gave wasn't understood or worse, was repetitive, I'd think my audience couldn't deliver a presentation like I could — and I was often right about that, but it wasn't why my presentation was obtuse or repetitive. I didn't stop to think that I could be a great presenter, but also have not prepared my presentation sufficiently in advance, showing a casual disrespect of my audience's valuable time.

If you can divorce an event from context, it's easy to jump to blame, but if we've cocked up, the answer is nearly always, not always, but nearly always upstream, where we will find our past selves, having not set the alarm clock early, having not delivered a square wave bolus over a longer period of time, having not thought through or rehearsed the presentation we're about to deliver.

The failure isn't the event, but the process that lead to it.