Success Through Successive Failure

Today I read an article about Honda and a series of documentary-style videos they have up at www.Dreams.Honda.com. The point that really hit home, for me was "Failure: Secret To Success".

This is especially poignant in light of the last couple of years I've experienced. At the end of a lengthy relationship, I worked to create something, something great, instead of dwelling on where I'd gone wrong. In this time, I've attempted to:

• start a local bike-messenger company
• start a bike-centered t-shirt "business" on Cafepress
• help start an electric-bike business
• learn how to vacuum-form polycarbonate
• learn how to braze bike frames
• start a bike company with a friend
• learn HTML and make a website about mountain biking in the area
• learn how to make bamboo composites
• write a book
• write short stories
• develop a professional relationship with local business owners and the aforementioned mountain bike website
• learn how to DJ
• and a few other things I thought were great but lost interest in or gave up on

Looking at that list I feel like a schmuck. For a good part of this past year I was pretty hard on myself for having the ability to create good and useful things and concepts but not ever actually following through with them. That's not to say that all of those ideas are worth pursuing. Some of them I genuinely lost interest in, some I decided rationally that they were not worth developing further. But it still floats there as a scepter of failure.
However, lately I've had a little bit different mindset. A few things happened in the last few months that reinforced the fact that I have ability and talent. And really all that I needed was a little nudge to see that. Today's article on Honda is an example:

The "Failure: The Secret to Success" includes a raft of engineers confessing their failures and how failure is inherent to advances in engineering. IndyCar driver Danica Patrick is featured speaking about her worst moment as an IndyCar racer, crashing at a race in Homestead, Fla.

The more I look at that list, the less it looks like evidence of failed ideas and more like banked experience.

-JF