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Yes, You Too Can Fail

By Peter Lloyd

From as early as I can remember, someone was trying to tell me that I could change the world. As sincere as they may have been in their effort to point me in a positively productive direction, I think they messed with my creative ambitions. I think those who continue to urge others to change the world, or promise young people that they can, do us all a disservice.

First of all, everybody changes the world. You don’t need to ponder the grandfather paradox to realize that your very existence makes an indelible and irreversible impact on the world. Multiply your every move by the butterfly effect and you have, in fact, changed the world. So you can take the rest of the day off.

Of course, when self-esteem-inflating gurus and helicopter parents proclaim “you can change the world,” you know what they mean. The promise is specious. Yes, you can change the world, but you’d do better to play the lottery.

Every creative artist, inventor, or innovator who reaches the pinnacle of success gets there through hard work and an even greater measure of good fortune. Sometimes good fortune means nothing more than meeting the right person at the right time. But great creative achievement never comes without luck. If only because chaos and randomness drive the universe.

Ever sit through a casting call? Anyone who does, sees any number of qualified actors scratched and one who wins, often on a whim. Not without ability but with luck. If you’ve ever hired someone from a pack of applicants, you know you’ve rejected many well-qualified contenders. More often than not, the winner possessed a fortunate advantage.

I will not argue against chance favoring the well prepared or victory going to those who persevere, but neither will I deny the role of the fickle finger of fate. In fact, when you credit chance, you have all the more reason to arm yourself with the advantages of hard work, planning, and perseverance.

That’s why I’d like to hear a commencement speaker warn an audience of wide-eyed grads that, after giving their all, the odds are with failure. And that’s good news. Just as the specter of disaster adds the necessary tension to a great cliff-hanger, the prospect of failure makes the struggle to create and invent all the more worthwhile. Nothing motivates like the prospect of failure.

So it’s wrong to promise a child or a graduating student that great creative achievement requires only focus, sacrifice, hard work, and persistence. It’s especially disingenuous when it comes from role models who lack the humility to credit the role good luck played in their success.

Great world-changing leaders are the exception and fate makes sure it stays that way. Try to imagine a world in which everyone who has been promised he or she can change the world, actually does. Not nominally but in a Steve Jobs or Martin Luther King sort of way. What a mess that would make!

Rather than focusing on changing the world, then, I recommend a more balanced approach. Simply make a positive impact on the little world you can affect.

See also:
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.
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