Why Millennials Are Failing At Failure?
Just face the facts! YOU ARE GOING TO FAIL! Now move on.
Millennials are failing at failure in school, jobs, and relationships. Reality is failure is a part of life. The next generation coming into the workforce needs to learn how to fail and fail forward.
Failure Needs Experience
What parent ever sat down their child of 2 years old and had a deep meaningful lesson on failure? Nothing really seems right about teaching little ones about failure.
Why?
Simple. Failure stings. In addition, you can’t teach on failure, but you can teach through failure.
Failure is best learned through experience.
You Got Yourself In It, Now Get Yourself Out
When our oldest son Stephen was 16 months old, he had climbed into one of those kid cars that seem to never get old. (I remember them being around when I was a kid.) He was going up and down the driveway when the car tipped over. I saw the whole thing happen in front of me. I knew he wasn’t hurt, but he still started to cry. One of our neighbors was chatting with me and my wife on the driveway when this happened. I uttered a phrase to Stephen and our friend turned to me completely surprised.
It was what I told Stephen that shocked her.
I told Stephen with a subtle tone, all while not even taking one step towards him, “You got into the car and you can get out of it.”
Even though Stephen was crying, I wanted him to get his composure and get himself out of his misfortune. My focus was on the problem solving, not the problem.
When I said, “You CAN get out of it,” I was encouraging him by letting him know what he was capable of accomplishing.
**If he was really hurt, I would definitely have gone over to pick him up, but he was okay. He was scared more than anything.
Stephen started to wrestle through the car and finally climbed out. He was not mad at me, but rather looked up to me with a proud look on his face.
Stephen had succeeded.
Our neighbor was baffled though. She told me, “I would have never had seen that as a learning opportunity.” She understood what I was doing.
I was teaching our son through experience how to fail.
Mean Parent?
Some people will read this story and think how horrible of a parent I was to Stephen. But I see it differently. I saw the event as a moment of opportunity. I couldn’t teach my son about failure, but I could let him learn through experience.
What is worse?
Rescuing someone from the pains of failure or letting them experience getting through failure while you are still close by?
Do not get me wrong, if you are the one teaching someone about failure, you need to stay close by while they are learning, but I believe we should be careful to rescue people from every failure.
Yes, it was difficult to let my son cry, but I knew the long term rewards would outweigh the momentary rescue. There is a time and place to rescue, but not in every situation.
Millennials Are Failing At Failure
Sadly, the next generation coming up into adulthood in this world has had a horrible hand dealt to them in regards to failure.
How?
It seems as though we have awards for everyone today. We have put up so many safety nets, we have gotten normalized to not falling. The world we live in today is about protection. We have protected and award the daylights out of people.
It has got to stop.
Motivation Is Not Bad, But The Results Are Lingering
I understand the motivation to the awards and protection. I have kids, I get it. But there is a generation moving up in the ranks of life who are feeling the repercussions of awards and over protection.
Millennials and Generation Z do not completely understand how to fail. They are scared of failure. However, the reality is most people are at least a bit scared of failure, the difference is whether the fear is crippling or not.
Fear Has Two Options
FEAR can either:
F-ocus
E-motions
A-round
R-uin
Or FEAR can:
F-ocus
E-nergy
A-round
R-espect
Our fear of failure should not restrain ourselves from movement, but generate sufficient energy to respect the circumstance or object. The respect in fear leads to movement while the ruins in fear lead to immobilization.
Tweet ThisWhat fear of failure do you have?
Advancing In Career, Relationships, and Life
Failure has to do with movement and progression. Failure means we have stopped at our forward movement, but it does not have to be permanent. Failure should only be a momentary side step to the continual movement of progressing forward.
You might have failed in school or failed at a job, so what. Now step to the side and keep moving forward. Failure should not cripple your efforts, but be a lesson on how to progress forward.
The only way you will learn how to fail and fail forward is to experience it.
Those who have advanced in their career, schooling, and relationships, have learned how to embrace failure and continue growing.
Your next promotion will probably follow a failure or two.
