AND FINALLY
Learn to fail — and you’ll be a success
THE summer of 2003 was terrible. I had a hysterectomy, my husband left me after 35 years, a serious novel into which I’d poured time, heart and soul was rejected, and I discovered that somebody I’d counted as a good friend was quite the opposite.
To cap it all, I’d been booked to present prizes and make an end-of-term speech at a girls’ school in Bath, but unwisely drowned my many sorrows the night before.
So, with an earth-shattering hangover, I gripped the lectern for support, facing an expectant audience of teenagers, parents and teachers without a single note. In a state of rebellious despair, I’d spontaneously decided to ditch my cliched old speech about pride in hard work and achievement — and speak what was on my mind.
Failure. I told them that in the future there’d be many times things didn’t work out, when people were unpleasant, when jobs went wrong, when you didn’t get picked, when hard work wasn’t rewarded, when disappointment made it hard to get out of bed, because there seemed no point.
That, I said, is the time you are truly tested. Not as in those silly old exams, but by learning how to cope with failure. Learning that you can get knocked out — or learn to roll with punches.
If you didn’t get picked for that team, you’ll find a new one. If that project didn’t work, you’ll start another one.
If hurt, you’ll look in the mirror shouting that there’s not an individual in the world who can destroy your essence. If disappointed, you jolly well extract the lesson. At last — resoundingly — I quoted the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett: ‘No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’
The applause hurt my sore head and I’d like to think some of them took my important message into their lives.
I remembered it when Harry Kane said this week that England’s defeat by Croatia ‘hurt’. Yes it did. But there is so much glory in the learning.
BeL answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry street, London W8 5TT, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.