Episode 5 - Failure

In this episode of the Women Doing Big Things podcast, Sarah Dusek and Mona De Vestel discuss the topic of failure and its importance in the journey to success. They explore the emotional challenges of failure and the tendency to internalize blame and shame. They emphasize the need to recalibrate and view failure as an opportunity for growth and course correction. They also discuss the fear of failure and the importance of taking risks and trying new things. They highlight the concept of failure as a building block and a pathway to innovation and creativity. Finally, they discuss the mindset shift needed to embrace failure and view it as a valuable learning experience. The conversation explores the mindset of scarcity and fear of failure, and how to overcome them. Sarah Dusek shares her experience of losing all her money in a failed business venture and how her perspective shifted from seeing it as the end to recognizing that she can always make more money. She emphasizes the importance of staying true to oneself, trying everything within one's capabilities, and living a life that is bigger than oneself. Failure is reframed as a necessary part of the journey towards success, and the ability to get back up and keep trying is highlighted.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Failure
• 2:43 Failure as a Building Block for Success
• 14:29 How Do We Learn to Love Failure?
• 16:14 Overcoming the Scarcity Mindset
• 25:37 Failure is Trying
• 35:19 Conclusion

Transcript

0:00

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the podcast, Women Doing Big Things. And we are here to talk about all of the issues that women face making big things happen. I'm Sarah Dusek. And I'm Mona de Vestel. I'm excited to be here today. So today we're going to delve into the topic of failure, which is not a topic that everybody likes talking about, but it's a really, really, to me, it's a really, really critical topic to think about if we want to also think about being successful. It's an interesting topic for sure. How do you feel about this topic, Mona? I hate it, actually. Tell me why you hate it. Well, I was thinking about this this morning and I was thinking about, okay, what is it about failure that is so difficult for me? And I think there are two opportunities for failure. one is to recalibrate, right? And see what course correction I can make. But what usually ends up happening is sort of like an internalization of like, What happened here? This is the dangerous slippery slope. I think this is the danger zone. in terms of failure taking you towards blame and shame. Blame and shame and you're starting to drown and you're not recalibrating. You're just internalizing, this, what, what does this reflect about me? That is not a positive thing. Like there's a way to, to recalibrate and say, I could have done this differently. This is a great opportunity for me. Clearly this, you know, it didn't work, but then there's that slippery slope into shame and saying, no. I'm terrible. This is awful. Maybe this, I'm, you know, I am fill in the blank. And that's where the danger zone happens. And I think that danger zone is not necessary. It's not, absolutely not necessary. I don't think we need to do that in order to successfully recalibrate. In fact, I think that's detrimental to the course correction process. But for me anyway, I don't know how it is for you. there usually is a little bit of swimming in the waters of the shame and the, you know, putting into question something about myself that's not constructive. That's not constructive. I think failure is emotionally challenging to navigate, for sure. But I think, and I feel like I'm in the midst in this moment again of wrangling with failure in a very up close and personal way, in the sense of... trying to do a whole lot of things right now and a lot of them are not working. So, I mean, how we define failure is one question, right? But I'm defining it in a sense of things not working out, things not going to plan, something not working, not winning, just nothing, nothing successful coming from whatever it is. And I think my realizations as I look back on my own journey over the last 15 years or so has been that every bit of anything that I would call success, has always been precursored by a whole lot of failure. And what I am now really wrapping my brain around which is helping me really reposition what I'm deeming, this is not working out, this is failing. I'm really wrapping my brain around, there is no way, doesn't seem to be anyway, not for me, who is definitely human, to get to a place of something being successful or something working without having to navigate through a whole lot of This is not working. This is failure and things going wrong. And so I am now learning to try and make it less personal. I am now realizing it has capacity to just be a building block, stepping you towards getting to success as opposed to something that kneecaps you and takes you out and... floors you. I'm now seeing it as a staircase as opposed to like a pathway to the basement. And that is a mind shift and has probably only been a mind shift that I've been navigating over the last few years. But realizing just how critical failure actually is to helping you get to a place where you might deem that this is working, I have succeeded, this is successful. and so I'm now kind of like really realizing just how important it is we harness it and use it because it's such a powerful building block to getting us where we want to go, that I'm really realizing it's so important that we talk about it and so important that we wrangle all the demons that surround it. I mean, I think that sounds great on paper for me, but I want to know how to do that better in terms of wrangling the demons because I agree with you too, that every success that I've had in my life has always been, things going wrong or not going according to plan and then gateways opening up into pathways that I hadn't anticipated, that I hadn't seen, that I couldn't have planned actually, especially in the creative process. Like I'm actually finishing a book right now and I've had multiple drafts and I had somebody going through it an editor and it just wasn't working. And realizing that that of not working was actually very beneficial because it was allowing me to see different openings and pathways into the narrative that I couldn't have anticipated, but are actually now in place because of the failure of the draft before. And I think that's really valuable. That's a really valuable process. But for me, usually that comes with wrangling of the demons, right? Which is... this manuscript's now, blah, blah Yes. Do you think, well, maybe before I try and answer that question, I don't even know if I have an answer for that question, but do you think there is anything about the, I thought I'd be here by when thing is really problematic when we talk about this whole concept of failure? Because I think a lot of what we deem to be failure actually isn't failure. it's just a timing issue. Mm -hmm. And sometimes our own timelines can throw us off and throw us into the pit as opposed to it then being I'm on a journey and I'm discovering and I'm learning. But the moment you start to say, I'm supposed to be here by this point in time, everything starts to crumble. Yeah, I think that's a very real thing. That's a very real thing. But that usually comes with this sort of static, like gnarly ball of the absence of creativity. I'm thinking of success as creativity for me, so failure is usually not putting things out into the world because there's a timing problem. There's, you know, I didn't finish or it didn't work and now I'm having to do this and that. But the image that keeps coming up and we've talked about fields quite a bit through our conversations. It's like the scorching, you know, what happens when you scorch, you completely burn down this land. And what follows is always regrowth. and regeneration. And there's this renewal of life in a way that could not have happened had the land not burned down, because it was Completely overburdened with this growth that actually wasn't leading to anything that wasn't generating any life that was just burdening the land, right? So if we think of this in the creative process there are all these elements and tentacles of things that we try to make happen we're going to make happen this needs to be there and that and it all burns down to the ground and It's terrifying and then you think What do I have now? I have nothing But actually, you don't have nothing. don't have nothing. That's the thing, isn't it? And that's the realization. And that's what's really helpful for me with this reframing of this whole concept is I'm not with nothing. It's like, even if the earth is burned, I have knowledge. I have wisdom. I have experience. I have truth that I now know that I didn't have before. And when I think about that in terms of sort of the entrepreneurial journey, and I think there are so many things that require you to try something and see if it sticks. It's like you have to test something, put it out there into the world and see if it sticks. And you don't know until you've put it out there into the world, whether it's going to stick or not. I mean, and you can create something and make something and put something out in the world. You don't know if it's a thing. Right. don't, until it's out there until you've tried it, until you've tested it. And sometimes, in fact, most of the time it's not a thing, right? That's just part of the process. But if you don't keep putting things out into the world, there is infinitely less possibility of you discovering a thing because you just didn't put anything out there. And it's like, you know, Again, I mean, this connects back with perfectionism, right? That women struggle with so much is this idea that we can't put anything out into the world unless it's perfect. But reality is, is if we don't put things out into the world, if we don't try things, if we don't test things, if we don't see if this could work, then there's no possibility of anything working. And I was just thinking about this, this weekend, and I was reflecting on something I'm working on at the moment. and thinking, I don't know if it's gonna work. I honestly don't know if what I'm trying to do right now, if this is gonna be work. And there is a huge cost to trying this thing. There is a huge physical cost. There's a huge expense to putting a try out into the world. Not knowing whether it's gonna be a thing. And I sat with it over the weekend, again, for the millionth time. and said, can I keep going? Can I keep pushing forward knowing there is a very real possibility this thing won't work and this thing will not be a thing. And... The conclusion that I came back with is, but if you don't put it out into the world, there is not even the possibility of it being a thing or the possibility of it working. And, and so the whole idea with, I think for me with like coming back with wrestling with failure again is I have to think about failure in terms of this is me trying. This is me putting things out into the world. And yes, they always has a cost. It always has a risk, but there's also the possibility of reward, right? And with no risk, there's no reward. And if we want to be successful, those two things go together. Risk and success absolutely are best friends. And so again, I'm like stuck with this concept of, I want to try. I want to, you know, at the end of the day, I need to know. Will this work? I don't know, but I'm going to try and I'm going to see, because then at least there is a possibility that it could work. as opposed to there being no possibility if I don't try. So again, it's like, I might fail. It might fail. It might be a very costly, expensive mistake that will fail. But again, I'm sitting in this place of measuring the cost and going, do I, do I want the possibility that it could work? And if I do.-hmm. have to try and therefore if I'm going to try I have to accept it might not work. It might not be a thing but unless I throw it at the wall I don't know if it's going to stick and the reality is is I should be throwing a lot of things at the wall if I want some things to stick and the less things you throw at the wall, the less things you try, the less things that you're willing to fail at, the less possibility there is of being successful. That's very, I love that. That's absolutely true. So how do we think we fall in love with the idea of failing? Because you and I are both saying here that we think failure is a precursor to success. It's like a building block or getting you to where you want to go. So how do we learn to love it more than we all do? I mean, for me, it has always been, I allow myself to pause and sit through it, because that's the key to sit through the failure and stay grounded into that moment of not internalizing it, not going into the shame, not going into the any of that, right? Just sitting there and saying something new is going to open up right now. This is a, Gateway to innovation, always. And it does. there is a magnetic thing that happens when I have sat in failure, right. And sitting on that scorched earth, allowing it to be what it is, which is scorched earth that is visibly nothing. You know, There's nothing here. I have failed. And then, and then new gateways open to innovation, things that I could not have foreseen. I couldn't have made happen on my own. Now I can act upon these openings, these new opportunities, these new spaces. And that's something that is very powerful, but for me to be able to sit through it. And not panic. Yeah, I love the concept of failure, forging new innovation, new creativity and new ideas, But I think one of the things for me has been navigating my own sense of waste. And by that, I mean loss. So failure often accompanies loss, right? You lose in some way. You lose your time, you lose your energy, you lose your money. Usually those three. The big three. Yeah. And failure is always associated with one of those losses. And I constantly keep having to come back to my own scarcity mentality that says there is a finite amount of something and now I have lost and that's finite. And when it comes to resources, money, because usually for me, when I'm trying something from an entrepreneurial standpoint, the most at risk is capital, cost of capital is at risk. My time is finite and there's nothing I can do about finite time. But when I think about own resources involved in something, I have have to stop thinking about waste and the loss of the amount of capital invested in something as being waste. Hmm. I have to start repositioning that as being fertilizer. I mean, a bit like what you were saying, Mona, you know, you scorch the earth, but actually it's investing in the earth. It's a building block. It's a tool for moving forward. and it was just what it costs to put that building block in the ground, to build that foundation, to put the fertilizer in the ground. And the moment I'm focusing on waste. the more panicky and more stressed and more fearful I am. So if I'm in scarcity mode, failure is terror. Failure is loss. Failure is like, if I'm in fertilizer mode, if I'm in abundance mode and I'm not in scarcity, I don't have to hold on to the mistake, the costly mistake, failure, with a sense of Whoa, the world's going to end. I have to slip into, well, that was an expensive lesson. That was a very expensive try. But it's not the end of us. It's not the end of me. It's not all the money that there ever will be. It might be all the money that I have right now, but it's not the end of the money that will ever be. And the more finite I am, the more fearful I am. So that idea of not getting fixated on, I mean, and it very well might have been all the money that we had to try. That has happened many times to me. This is all the money that we had and we threw it at the wall and it didn't work. But it was not the end of all the money in the universe. It was just what was in my bank account at the time that we had available. to try something with, but I have to get my mindset off. Well, now I've lost, I've lost everything that I had without thinking about, but I can always make more money. There's always a way to find more money. There's always a way. You're like, you know, the pie is not finite. Time is finite, but resources are not, even when they look like they are in our own bank accounts, right? It's just, that's not all the money that exists in the universe. if I'm stuck with a mindset that says, I have to hold onto what I've got, I can't risk what I've got. I can't release what I've got to try anything. The more trapped in terror and fear I am. and the less likely I am to succeed. But what you're describing, this wrestling of the demons of fear in the heart of failure, really seems to require powers of Herculean proportions, like to be able to... So walk me through how you, what, how do you get past that mentality of this is not waste, this is fertilizer? What is the switch? Well, maybe I can only tell you how I am still getting used to it because it's still a thing in my head. But I am, I am recognizing more and more how my own scarcity shows up and how my fear of scarcity shows up. And I'm getting better at acknowledging it and seeing it in real time. And then going back to But even when I've been in real scarcity and I am a woman who's lived off food stamps with two small children. So I really do know what it's like to live with really nothing. Even when I've been in that moment, I've had enough. And it's like, you know, what scarcity does is try and trick you into into telling you that you will not be okay. The world will not be okay. Your life will not be okay. And therefore you can't make any risks because this is all you've got. And this is what's keeping you okay. And actually the reality is, is even being in terrible scarcity and, and, and real lack, we were okay. We were fine. And we, and yes, it wasn't pleasurable and it wasn't a desirable circumstance to go back to, but the world wasn't ending and You know, life as I know it was not coming to an end. And it's like we can get fixated on the wrong things, right? And we can tie our own wellbeing up with what we're holding in the bank. And actually our wellbeing probably is much more tied to how are we living out of our sense of purpose and dreams and what we can imagine and what we want to create. And the more that we hold that back and the more that we squash that down, the more damage we do to our wellbeing than if we had risked it all and, you know, put everything out there and gave it a shot and to see if anything sticks. There's more life there than there is in the place of holding everything tight, for sure. So what is your antidote to the mentality of scarcity? Is it that sense of purpose in the dream and living, like holding on to the dream and the vision? What is your antidote? Yeah, my antidote is staying true to who I believe I am. My antidote is, is true to trying everything that is within me, like, and giving it a shot and doing what I can to make it happen. And there are times when I have, when I, I'm in fact 99 % of the time, the dreams I have in my heart are not pull off -able all by myself, like with just hard work, right? They require external things, they require more money than I've got, they require someone else to do something, they require like it's not possible for me to just make it happen. But that's where the magic is for me. That is where the little bit of being alive is because then it says I am living out of a place where I'm trying to make the impossible happen and that I've got dreams and I'm living a life that's bigger than myself and I'm I'm saying I'm not going to be held back by what I think I'm capable of, what I, the resources that I have, what I know, you know, none of those things are limits. All of those things are just starting points. And that for me is what real failure is, is like not stepping out of the boat. Like failure was. not getting out of the boat and walking on water and starting to sink. That wasn't failure. Failure would be not getting out of the boat in the first place. So I don't know if that answers the question, but I think it's about really staying connected to what do I really want? What do I really care about? What matters to me? What makes me feel alive? And if you're living out of that place, Yeah. we're going to live our best lives. They might be scary lives, but they're going to be our best lives. And there's the possibility of bringing to life everything that you can imagine. Mm -hmm. I think I love what you just said earlier if I don't know if I heard you correctly but you said magic for you is making the impossible happen and I love that. That's what makes you feel alive. what makes me feel alive is the idea of pulling something off that on paper you should not be able to pull off, like that it's not doable. And at the same time, I think Sarah, that is really perverse. You are setting yourself up for a life of stress and disaster and like constant failure. And I'm like, well, yeah, part of the time. A lot of the time that is true. But what makes me feel alive is the trying. And that's for me what I'm, the penny for me is just dropping, that's what failure is for me. Failure is trying. but the trying is what makes me feel alive. And if I'm trying to make something happen, I'm... But yeah. And so failure no longer is this sense of like, well that sucked. Because failure is about bringing everything to the table that you are about want to do and giving it your best shot and going, I don't know if this is going to work. I don't know if I'm going to pull it off, but I'm going to do it anyway. And you said failure is not getting out of the boat, which is great, which is great image. For me, failure is not getting back up after the wave has swallowed me and the boat. And say, okay, well that wave was so scary and it was too big and now I'm just so weakened by this situation. I'm not getting back up. That's failure. that scenario, yeah, that's happened to me too. And in that scenario, when I get back up again, I'm not necessarily getting back up in the same way that I was up before. Like, it's not like, I don't have to get back up and like try and do what I did all over again and it almost killed you. You, you can get back up in different ways, right? But the, the onus is on finding, finding the way. that makes sense, that makes you alive, that is discovering you. That's tapping into more of who you are. Yeah, but it's just not an option to not get back up. But you do have to learn to get back up in a different way, I often say to the entrepreneurs that I work with that she who can stay in the game long enough or outlast everybody else will ultimately win. you just have to stay in the game. Like part of succeeding. You know, part of navigating failure is to keep getting up over and over and over and over again. And you try something and it doesn't work. And you try something and it doesn't work. And you try something and you just have to keep trying until ultimately something does work and something is a thing. And that is, that's time and that's energy and that's staying in the race. Mm -hmm, but I think there is a space in between the falling down and the getting back up. That is the very challenging space. There is a space in there. That's a mindset space where you know, you have two choices you can either recalibrate and say, okay wait I'm gonna get it back up or you give in to the fear and the paralysis and you don't get back up. If we can handle that moment in between the falling down and the getting back up, I think that we're golden. What do you think about that? you need a big cry in the middle, right? You need a big cry. Sometimes you just have to give yourself a moment and go, this does not feel okay. I am not okay with this. This really hurts. And to just for it to be okay to say out loud this in this moment, this really sucks. This not working out. This not happening. This failure. This hurts. This loss. this amount of money going down the drain, this waste of time, this hurts, this really, really hurts. And give yourself a minute. Then put your big girl pants back on and go, okay, let's take everything we now know and everything that we have now realized because of this and allow it to drive us into the next version of ourselves, the next version of our idea, the next version. what's possible. I remember saying to Jake, I don't know, a million years ago now, but when we were first starting out, Mm -hmm. I remember we were on our first business venture together was a failure. and we started a social property development company in the UK back in 2006. So right before the great financial crash. so brilliant timing. and the business was going really, really well. We were employing a whole bunch of, school leavers had no qualifications and were managing to train them in really useful skills and painting and plumbing and tiling and all sorts of stuff. And that side of the business was great. The social impact side was great. But then the market fell out of the housing market and the great financial crash and the whole business collapsed on itself. And I remember thinking, we have just lost all the money, all. the money we had. I had very little money going into that business. We just lost everything we had. And I remember the feeling of like this catastrophic loss of like, that was, that was, that was like my life savings that we had right there, you know, and it's all, it's all gone. And I, I had to take a moment. Like it was a moment of like, this is bad. This is like, this is. This is all the money we've got. But I remember Jake saying to me, we will always be able to make more money. Mm -hmm. And I remember thinking, what are you talking about? We just lost all the money we'd already made. But he was right. It was like, we are talented, capable human beings. Like, we can always go make more money. And his perspective and my perspective on that loss was totally different. But his ability to see this is not the end of the universe. This business not working out, this business tanking is not the end was revolutionary for me because in my mind, what's the end? We're done. We're finished. Our lives are over. We lost everything. We're finished. We're washed up. And his mindset was like, well, this, this isn't great. This is pretty, pretty darn not fantastic. you pregnant with our first child at the time. So especially not fantastic. But I remember him saying, it's okay. We'll start, we'll start again. We can go again. We can always make more money. We're alive. We're healthy. We're fine. You know, we have a social safety net and that we have parents who love us and we can move in with them, which is what we had to do, which no, no grown adult human being wants to do. Right. But, you know, That's a privilege we had. We had, you know, parents who would take us back and put us under their roof. Weren't going to be homeless. but you know, it was like, that's night and day. Like, can you, can you pick yourself back up and go, you're not finished. Your life's not over. Yes, you lost all the money you had, but you can go again. Like this doesn't have to define, like this moment in time is a building block. not a defining moment that says you are not capable of building a successful business. It's just a learning experience and the reality. If you're going to go into business, you're going to lose a whole bunch of money at some point or other. That's just the way it works. Because if you're going to try anything, you're going to take a risk. And if you're going to take a risk, sometimes that risk will pay off and sometimes it won't. But that's okay. If you don't ever take any risks, there's no possibility of there being success. I think that phrase that you said is key, which is we will always be able to make more money. We are creative, intelligent, capable people. And there's so much money out there. We will always be able to make more money. I think that's the key and that's the antidote to the mentality of scarcity. allowing failure to be your friend, not your foe, and allowing it to be a building block that enables you to grow rather than keeping you stuck and stationary. failure my friend. Failure my friend, indeed. So thanks very much for joining us everybody. we would love to hear your tales of failure that have turned into successes or how you go about reframing failure to help you use it as a building block towards success. I think the more reframing we can do or the more phrases that we have in our armory to help us navigate failure towards success, the better. So share in the comments, tell us your stories. We would love to hear from you. Yep, definitely. Tell us your stories. It's been great to have you with us. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye Mona. Bye everyone. Bye.