Higginson: Rethinking failure

Have you ever felt completely unfocused and unable to contribute? Irritable with employees? Sleepless hours in bed at night? Have you plunged into crying spells at a moment’s notice?

These descriptions might ring familiar to many of us from just dealing with what life throws at us from time-to-time. In this case, it’s how Walt Disney described himself following, “a heck of a breakdown” in the early 1930s. This is the same Walt Disney who oversaw dozens of feature films, won 32 Academy Awards and created a company that last week bid $73.3 billion to acquire 21^st Century Fox.

At the age of 22, Walt was fired from a newspaper for not being creative enough. He failed at business numerous times and was told his idea to distribute Mickey Mouse films in 1927 would not work, because a giant mouse on the screen would terrify women.

Walt’s story is not unique, as success is rarely gained without failure. Following Elvis Presley’s first live performance, his manager told him, “You ain’t going nowhere son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.” Stephen King was told by a publisher when he was 20 that “We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.” This was following the rejection of his manuscript for “Carrie.” And of course, the 1,000 unsuccessful attempts by Thomas Edison to invent the light bulb might go into the hall of fame of failures, leading ultimately to success. A given is that the famous do not have a monopoly on overcoming failures as this ability is inherent in all of us.

While reading the very touching and personal comments my children wrote in my Father’s Day cards (including one from a first-time father), I was touched with the realization that perhaps I need to change my thinking about what it means to fail. Regardless of being a parent, spouse, child or friend, our comprehension of ultimate success relies on our determination to rise above our losses and failures.

Johnson & Johnson, the consumer giant founded in 1886, had a divisional president once who invested millions of dollars launching a new product that proved to be a failure. The CEO asked to see him. Anticipating what the meeting would be about, and following some small talk, the president said to the CEO, “So I guess you will want to fire me now.” The CEO laughed instead, saying “I just spent millions of dollars training you. Why would I fire you now?”

The beauty of being a parent, child, sibling or friend is that unlike being an employee, though there will be mistakes and heartache along the way, our journey will be paved with a lifetime of training and learning, and more importantly, we can’t truly be fired from our relationship.

In the movie “Apollo 13,” the character Gene Krantz is played by Ed Harris. When confronted with extreme duress and tension in attempting to figure out how to bring the astronauts safely back to earth, Ed proclaims, “We’ve never lost an American in space. We’re sure as heck not going to lose one on my watch. Failure is not an option.” He was correct, failures may occur, but they should never be an option.

Out walking my dog the other evening I ran into recently retired Poway Councilman Jim Cunningham. Jim, who served the City of Poway admirably for a decade, chatted with me about some of his success and things he took real pride in, which he rightfully should. He then shared a matter he felt he had failed at. I believe what Jim and often each of us might perceive as failure, when looked at differently, is really the ability to learn.

Nelson Mandela might have said it best, “I never lose. I either win or I learn.”

Higginson served on the Poway City Council from 1986 to 2014.