Life just hit us all in the head with a brick … Hail the fail.

There is naturally a lot of doom and gloom about in business circles, and life generally, at present. Sure, we must remain optimistic and look to better days – they will return - but we also have to accept that there is going to be carnage for a while. On the business front, the projections for the survival of many enterprises are stark which in turn has huge implications for owners, managers, employees and indeed customers. For people. Every business whether large or small, new or established, old-school or cutting edge is in a dogfight for survival right now. I am in that same fight so this is not theoretical for me. And sadly, many companies will not make it. No matter what happens, failure is going to be a big part of our lives in the months and years ahead.

That is why it is time to talk about failure. But talk about it in a different way.

Success is sexy. It gets all the attention. Always has done, always will do. There are no medals for coming last in the 100 metres final at the Olympics; no annual Oscar nominations for crappiest movie; no ‘Bankrupt-of-the-Year’ ceremony; and employees do not get their picture on the wall for ‘Waster-of-the-Month’. No, it is all about success. We are all primed for it: winning is everything and all that.

To fail is to lose. To be a lo—ser. This is dangerous thinking at times like these.

Of course, it is normal that success is more highly prized than failure. It is probably a natural law. But, with so much failure, or at least the fear of it, in the air right now I think we all need to reflect a little on our attitudes to the various setbacks we encounter in life. We cannot allow the notion of ‘failure’ to define who we are, and that applies whether you’re a business person, or if this COVID-19 tsunami is going to cause you to ‘fail’ in other ways: like not achieve a goal, lose your job, miss a promotion, whatever it might be. As part of our journey through and beyond COVID-19 we need to reframe how we view, discuss, and therefore respond to the notion of failure.

For starters, failure should not, and does not, define those on the receiving end of it. In fact, I believe that failure can be a good thing. I know, I know, that is a total cliché. And probably a bloody annoying one at that if you are currently facing into a major setback. But it CAN be true. Well, it can be, in certain circumstances I mean. For sure, if someone fails because they were too damn lazy to do something properly, or due to the fact that they acted in a completely stupid way, then I’m sorry, there is very little to learn from failures of that nature. But when you have done your best, and all of a sudden COVID-19 comes along and puts you out of business, or causes you to lose your job, or to not succeed in some way, to my mind you have not failed as such. I like this quote from Steve Jobs, if you follow my posts, you will see that I use it a lot. He said, “Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.”

So, in the current climate none of us will have failed in the normal sense of the word. Life just came along and hit us all on the head with one hell of a brick.

But for all of that, even with the ‘excuse’ of COVID-19, the reality for most of us is that we will still feel embarrassed or ashamed – or any number of emotions - if we don’t make it through to the other side with our business, job, or goal, still intact: call it what you will, it will still feel like a failure. And often the shame of failure can be worse than the failure itself, can’t it? But this is the first thing that will have to change in how we deal with the notion of failure – individually and collectively we need to reframe it in the months ahead and help each other through it.

There is no magic formula for dealing with any type of failure but here are some general considerations we should all take into account as we move ahead:

1. Get on top of the emotions

Failure – perceived and real – hurts: simple as that. No matter what the cause. It damages the ego, chips away at our self-esteem, and erodes our sense of self-worth. In short, it sucks. And the bigger the setback, the more it sucks. If you lose a business you’ve worked on for decades due to COVID-19, or a job you gave everything to for years disappears, or some goal you had devoted yourself to becomes unachievable, that’s going to seriously hurt. So to say there will not be negative emotions attached would be idiotic. But if you allow those feelings to take hold longer term, you will damage your ability to pick yourself up and try again in future. Of course, it is not easy to simply ignore the emotions associated with our failures, but it is possible to manage them – at least to the point where you control them, not they you.

It can be good to be angry with yourself, to feel frustrated, or dejected, even to feel guilt or shame: it shows you care, are ambitious and want to get back on the horse. Embrace those feelings and harness them to help you bounce back. It is not good, though, when you allow those feelings to run riot to the extent where you begin to destroy your own confidence and drive. Emotions that seek to tie you down in the present, or past, and tell you that you are done for, washed up, that there is no way back, that you are a loser, they are the ones to quash immediately.

2. Don’t play the blame game

Unfortunately, when faced with a setback of any kind there can be a tendency to jump to the blame game as a way out. You can already see this in a big way in how President Trump is dealing with the crisis. Now, this is not a political point I’m trying to make but his blaming of the Chinese, WHO, Governors – anybody but himself really – is simply a way of deflecting responsibility for shortcomings that may fall at his feet or those of his administration.

At an individual level, we are all human and can also fall into this trap. If we face a setback in business or personal lives due to COVID-19, when the hurt is at its peak, it will be natural to look for a scapegoat. Maybe it will be because the government didn’t act quickly or boldly enough, or that the banks were to blame, or that damn debtor that didn’t pay up. There will always be contributing factors to a setback.

Blaming others whether by a president or a plumber – even when there are valid reasons for it – achieves nothing in the short term. Truth is, even though it will be shown that mistakes were made, nobody is really to blame in this instance. We all just got hit with a brick.

3. Reframe the failure

One way to try to ‘benefit’ from any setback is to consider how it might be reframed. For example, it is well known that Thomas Edison had many failures before he invented the light bulb. But each and every one of those failures, as it turns out, brought him closer to his ultimate goal. Given the scale and number of his setbacks many would have given up the ghost, but not Edison. In fact, he once said “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” That, for me, is a nice bit of reframing.

Okay, this might seem like another annoying cliché when facing such a horror show as, say, going out of business. But with time and distance from any event, you can begin to better reframe things. Sure, not everything can be repackaged in such snazzy terms as Edison employed, but there is always more than one way to objectively look at any incident.

At society level, I’ll bet that when this thing is over in a few years, we’ll have learned a lot from COVID-19. If we respond appropriately, maybe we can harness the amazing goodwill and sense of community we are seeing right now to build a better future for us all. Maybe this is a wakeup call for the world: cop on guys, reprioritise things, build a fairer more sustainable society. And stop killing the planet. Maybe future generations will talk about COVID-19 as a positive turning point for the world. Who knows?

Even at a micro level we can also reframe things. As one colleague said to me this week when talking about whether his business will survive: “If we do go under, well, I’ll be in good company – there’ll be a lot of us dusting ourselves down after this. Hey, maybe I could start a network for business owners that went to the wall during COVID-19!! Now, there’s an idea….”

4. Take a second look, in time

Again, it is very easy to say things like ‘learn the lessons’, but when a global pandemic that is totally outside of your control comes out of nowhere and wipes you out, what possible lessons could there be? Probably not a whole lot in terms of keeping a business afloat, but there may be many other lessons that spin from it.

As mentioned, there are definitely lessons to be learned for society as a whole. There are also lessons in terms of how we protect individuals when their livelihoods are threatened: contrast the response this time around versus what happened after the crash in 2008. Back then, most people were left to swing in the breeze and austerity was seen as the only roadmap out of the mess. This time around it is people and community first. That is a definitely great lesson applied from the last global crisis.

At an individual level you definitely cannot learn the lessons whilst that ‘failure’ is staring you in the face. Your first step will therefore be to manage the emotional responses as described; in other words, get yourself through the immediate aftermath. Then, when your emotions have stabilised, your ability to be rational will increase and you are better placed to start learning the lessons, whatever they may be. Perhaps you will realise that you devoted too much of your life to the business, your job, or in the pursuit of the now-lost goal. Perhaps finding yourself suddenly free from the shackles that a business, job, or goal can place on you, you will see that there are other things you would prefer to do with your life? Again who knows? But there will definitely be something to learn at a personal level from this for all of us, although it may take time to realise it. For me, this crisis has already reinforced that my little girls are the most important thing in my life. Full stop.

To close, whatever setback or ‘failure’ you will face due to COVID-19, the important point to remember is that you will be in good company. Nobody is getting through this unscathed. I could list pages and pages of quotes here from successful people who highlight the contribution that failures have made to their ultimate success, but I came across this little anecdote about J.K. Rowling, the famous author, which I think does the trick. During an address at Harvard, she spoke to students about failure and, as part of that, related her own personal story about how – as a young woman – she had given up her dream of writing novels to study something more practical. Despite that, she explained, she still ended up as an unemployed single mom “as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless.” But during that difficult period, she realized that she still had a wonderful daughter, an old typewriter, and an idea …

“You might never fail on the scale I did,” she told the audience. “But it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all — in which case, you fail by default. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.”

I will leave you with the words of Samuel Beckett, words I think have never been more relevant than in these troubled times.

Ever tried.

Ever failed.

No matter.

Try Again.

Fail again.

Fail better.

Says it all really.

And remember, if you make it through this with your health and that of your loved ones fully intact won’t that be a success in itself?