by Beth Kempton
But this is what we do. The better we get at something the more we widen our field of vision. We move from puddle to pond, from pond to sea. The ideal is always changing, and as long as we use that as motivation to do more quality, heart-and-soul work, that’s fine. But when it becomes an exercise in comparison it’s a dangerous place to be. I’m not saying you should settle for the puddle. I’m saying you might be happy in the pond, and that’s OK if that’s where you do your best. You might feel destined for the sea, and that’s fine too. Just be sure you go there for the right reasons.
There is no ‘done’, ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’ with learning. There is just learning.
How is this connected to wabi sabi ? It is the relief that comes from knowing that nothing is ever permanent, perfect or complete. When I mess up, it’s a blip, not a life sentence. When I make a mistake, I can correct it, or do things better next time. Wherever I am on my journey of learning, I am still travelling, not at the end of the line, which allows me to relax in the knowledge that I’m not supposed to know everything, and makes me curious about what else there is to learn.
There is always the potential for a dip in the graph, for a plateau or for a rise. It simply depends on you, your attitude, energy and attention. This doesn’t just go for learning a skill. It’s true with learning about finances, or love or parenting. Even about ourselves. There is no done, complete or perfect. There is just learning.
The Japanese attitude to failure
In the course of my research, one of the major questions I had to grapple with was how to reconcile the wabi-sabi -inspired notion of imperfection with the well-documented aversion to public failure in Japan. If a business fails, the CEO usually takes personal responsibility. The Asian economic crisis of the 1990s saw a domino toppling of some of the top figures in the country. And it’s not just those in the public eye – every year, most students spend hours attending after-school juku (cram schools) to prepare for high-school and university entrance exams, in order to avoid missing out on a prized place. People in Japan don’t like failure any more than anyone else, and there is still a social stigma attached to ‘losing face’ when things don’t work out.
What I have come to realise is that reframing failure does not mean learning to love it, or welcoming it. It means doing your best with the intention of not failing (because you care about what you are doing), but if failure happens, then it means learning to deal with it in a way that helps you move forward.
In the Disrupting Japan podcast, an interview with Hiroshi Nagashima, founder of failed company Sharebu Kids, illustrates this brilliantly. 1 In his introduction, the host, Tim Romero – a veteran of start-ups in Japan – said: ‘Failure hurts. Failure is lonely. Some people who you thought were close friends stop returning your calls. Failure is where you see both the absolute worst and sometimes the absolute best in both yourself and the people around you.’
When Tim’s guest Mr Nagashima’s company went south, his circle of investors, friends and family were actually more accepting and supportive than he expected. The hardest part was how he initially beat himself up. However, in the end, Mr Nagashima had a very clear view of what he would do differently if he did it again, and managed to use his experience to land a strong job in another company. He said the experience of failure, however difficult at the time, had strengthened him as a person, built his resolve, changed his perspective and made him worry less about things that don’t really matter.
In order to reframe failure, we first have to reframe success. When we set ourselves up with a singular goal and hang our personal worth on whether or not we achieve it – even if many of the contributing factors are beyond our control – the fall can be painful. This singular goal is caught up in our idea of perfection. ‘If only I achieve X, become Y, make Z … I will be happy.’
Instead, if we change our view of success to one about how we want to feel, and how we want to experience life, everything changes with that. We discuss this further in Chapter 7 but, for now, let’s look at what we can learn about failure when we approach it with a wabi sabi world view:
1. We don’t have to like failure to learn from it. Failure builds our resilience and helps us grow in other ways. And when we stop trying to be perfect, we might not even see the ‘failure’ as a ‘failure’ any more.
2. The feeling of failure won’t last for ever. Nothing is permanent. Each day is an opportunity for a new beginning.
3. Everything is changing. Perhaps this is a moment to pause, pivot and pursue something else.
The perils of pursuit
When we try our luck on a bigger stage and it doesn’t work out, it’s not a failure, it’s a moment of expansion.
Competition is not a bad thing. It encourages us to challenge ourselves and hone our craft. The issue comes when we try to pursue perfection in a world where so much is beyond our control. Our risk of failure is a product of the size of the stage we put ourselves on. Anyone can win at anything if the stage is small enough. The growth opportunity is in the stretching, which will inevitably mean there are times when we don’t win. But if we see it from the beginning for what it is – us expanding our comfort zone and opening our hearts to an even bigger experience – then it’s a gift.
As an interpreter, I have stood side by side with numerous world-class athletes who have fallen short of their goals on the global stage, as well as with others who have won Olympic medals. I understand the emotional chasm between winning and losing. I have lived the depth of disappointment in the immediate aftermath of missing a goal for which so much has been sacrificed along the way. But without exception, those who go on to greater things are those who realise this: the important thing is what happens next.
It’s the same with filmmaking, with cake baking, with academic achievement – indeed, in any arena where we chase a specific dream. We have a choice in any moment of perceived failure, about what we do with it, and how we move forward.
Be ambitious. Be talented. Be amazing. Pursue inspiring dreams, and delight in the steps along the way. But don’t pursue that elusive ego-driven perfection. Instead, relax in the knowledge that perfection is an unattainable goal. It’s the expansion that matters.
Practising expansion
My Japan connection has led me to some unusual jobs over the years, perhaps none more so than as an interpreter for a long-distance swimmer who was attempting to traverse the English Channel in under fifteen hours. Ken Igarashi is a rice farmer from the coastal city of Tsuruoka. A keen swimmer at junior high school, he then fell into work and family life, leaving the swimming behind. In his twenties he took up weightlifting, and this strength would serve him well when he returned to long-distance swimming in his mid-thirties.
When I met him, a decade or so later, he was already the first Japanese person to have swum the Tsugaru Strait, the piece of water between Honshū and Hokkaidō, which connects the Sea of Japan with the Pacific Ocean. He travelled to Dover with his coach, and the three of us stayed in a cosy B&B with seagulls calling outside. The rules for attempting a cross-Channel swim from England to France are strict, not least because of the dangers of crossing a major shipping lane. We had a set window for the swim, and an independent adjudicator would accompany the coach and me on a pilot boat alongside Ken. We were able to throw him drinks and food attached to a thin rope, but if the rope went taut the attempt was off. If he touched the boat at any time, the attempt was off. Regardless of whether he got cramp, was stung by a jellyfish or anything else along the way, we were not allowed to offer any physical assistance whatsoever to the Vaseline-covered man in Speedos alongside our boat.
On the designated day of his swim, I woke around 3 a.m., had a cheese sandwich and went to the lobby to meet Ken and his coach. To my dismay, Ken was groggy and swaying. It turned out that the sleeping pills and whisky he had imbibed the night before to help get over the jet lag had not mixed well and, on any normal day, he would have been advised to go back to bed. I did not want him to step i
nto the sea, in the dark, in that state, but he insisted he only had one window to try this. Ultimately, the decision rested with his coach, and, after a careful assessment, he gave the green light.
Things did not begin well. The challenge starts the moment you step off the shore at Dover and into the water, so the clock was already ticking when bizarrely, just a few hundred feet out, Ken started swimming back to England. The adjudicator was understandably concerned at his disorientation. The coach shouted some instructions, and encouraged him to face France again, and off we went.
The shock of the cold and the realisation of the error seemed to shake him fully awake, and after that it was a solid show of perseverance for many hours. However, that initial mistake cost him dearly at the end. There is a point close to Calais which juts further into the sea than any other part of the shoreline. If you are fast enough in reaching it, you can shave a significant amount off your final time. Unfortunately, Ken just missed it, and with the effect of the tide, he ended up swimming a further two hours.
As soon as he climbed back into the boat, shivering and exhausted but jubilant that he had reached France, he was interviewed by NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, via satellite phone. Asked about his challenge Ken replied ‘Ishōkenmei ganbarimashita. ’ ‘I gave it my all.’
By the harshest of standards, Ken had failed to reach his fifteen-hour goal, eventually finishing in sixteen hours and forty-two minutes. However, he had still swum the Channel – a monumental effort – so he focused on what he had achieved, and was proud that he had tried his best and pushed himself to complete his first international crossing. There is also no doubt he took away some major learning for his future challenges.
That attitude took him far. Ken Igarashi, whose family name means ‘Fifty Storms’, went on to become the first Japanese person to swim from Japan to Korea, from Japan to Russia, and all the way across Lake Baikal.
TEN WAYS TO NURTURE RESILIENCE
1. Boost your physical vitality, with exercise, nourishment and rest.
2. Boost your mental vitality with quiet time, adequate sleep and time in nature.
3. Practise coping with small things, so you can better cope with the big things.
4. Set yourself a series of small goals and work towards them.
5. Grow something. Pay attention to the difference your care makes.
6. Make regular notes of the things you do well, to remind you how capable you are.
7. Seek out community and build a support network.
8. Seek out resilience role models and learn from them.
9. Surround yourself with inspiring quotes.
10. Look for reasons to be positive every day.
But it’s hard …
… I know it’s hard. The kind of failure that turns to regret and self-bashing is heavy. The job you didn’t get. Ouch. The years you spent in a relationship with someone who crushed your spirit. Ouch. The fifteenth publisher rejecting your book proposal. Ouch. The project you agreed to without a contract, which then went south. Ouch. The time you said yes, when you knew in your gut it should have been a no. Ouch all over again.
No one’s saying it’s easy to fail. But the good news is, you get to choose what you do with it. If you try to hold the failure in that place of regret and self-bashing, it will only morph into something darker and heavier. Because everything changes, right? Instead, try to encourage it to transform into a lesson. However hard this may seem, you have the power to make that choice at any time. Focus on what would be different if you excavated the teaching instead.
Resistance to the possibility of failure
In my work helping people transition between careers, between lifestyles and between life stages, I constantly come across resistance to being a beginner, due to an overwhelming fear of failure. If you start something new, it’s highly likely you will get things wrong along the way.
We have to stop telling ourselves that everyone is watching, waiting for us to fail. They really aren’t.
There’s no doubt this is hard on the spirit, as well as on the ego. It’s easy to see why so many people spend years on a track that is making them miserable now, to avoid the possibility of a mistake making them miserable in future. This is particularly the case with people wanting to shift into a more creative way of living, or earning their income from a creative profession. The risk is too high, the fear of failure too great, the ghosts of art teachers and other critics from the past too loud in their ears. But there is something they don’t realise: failing your way forward is progress. Each time you do it, you build up your store of inner wisdom, to draw on next time you need it. The ‘failure’ does not have to be the end of the story. It can be the beginning of the next chapter, but only if you accept the imperfection, show yourself compassion, and choose to move forward.
No one is watching …
Cross-legged on a small cushion in a temple in Kyōto, I’m getting it all wrong. I’m supposed to be meditating, but all I can think of is the pins and needles in my legs, the shuffling noise as I try to get more comfortable, the voices in my head telling me everyone must be looking at me disapprovingly for being such a distraction. I can’t resist sneaking a look around. Of course, no one is looking at me. No one cares what I am doing, or whether I am doing it ‘properly’. They are too busy doing their own thing.
Over here it’s just me, judging myself, telling myself I’ve failed before I’ve actually thought through what ‘success’ even means in a meditation. Only when I let go of the judgement do I finally relax into the moment and the setting, the faint sound of a bell, the discomfort as my ankles push against the floor, the smell of fresh tatami, the swish of the gardener raking the garden outside, the remembering that I am on an adventure and I chose to be here today.
SIX STRESS-FREE STEPS TO LEARNING FROM FAILURE
Use the six steps below to process any particular event or situation that you are hanging on to as a ‘failure’:
1. Truth State the facts about what happened.
2. Humility Get clear on who you have been blaming, and what role you played.
3. Simplicity Excavate your single greatest learning from the situation.
4. Impermanence Identify what was lost, what was gained and what has changed inside you.
5. Imperfection Acknowledge what imperfection – in yourself or in someone else – you must forgive or embrace to move on, and remind yourself that imperfection makes you human.
6. Incompleteness Recognise that this is not the end of the story. Decide what you will do next.
Overcoming the fear of creative failure
We do our best creative work when we are at our most open and honest. That’s when the results of our creativity connect deeply with others, expressing things we might never say in conversation. But sharing that which comes from deep inside can make us feel vulnerable, exposed, afraid: what if it’s criticised, ridiculed or rejected? That would feel like we are being criticised, ridiculed or rejected. So it’s no surprise that in my work supporting people to build a creative career this comes up time and again.
The fear of failure is one of the most significant barriers to people doing what they love. And herein lies one of wabi sabi ’s most important lessons. Wabi sabi is an intuitive response to beauty that reflects the true nature of life. It can be a response in someone else to the beauty of your creativity, which has come from within you. This means your creativity has to be shared in order for its beauty to be truly seen.
So for all those of us who are hiding our creative expression for fear of failure, we are missing the point. The true beauty is not in the achievement of some kind of perfection, but rather in the sharing of the creation itself.
Of course, there are many measures of ‘success’ these days, depending on which metrics you favour. Did you sell out your art show? Did your book make the bestseller list? Did you have hundreds of Instagram followers liking your most recent post? These things matter insofar as they can help you make a liv
ing, which lets you do your creative thing more of the time, and we will explore this further in Chapter 7 . But these metrics do not matter at all in terms of the beauty you and the observers of your work are creating together. The only failure there would be avoiding creating in the first place.
Giving it a go
It’s not easy to deal with a fear of failure with something as personal as creativity, but try reframing that fear as an indicator of what you really care about, and have a go anyway.
It is a balmy spring morning, and I find myself strolling through the Nishijin textile district, home of weaving in Kyōto for over 1,500 years, and a stone’s throw from the apartment my now-husband Mr K and I have rented for six months. Nishijin is a fascinating area of the city, where you can see artisans at work, not for the benefit of tourists, but because they are simply doing their jobs, as many generations of talented people have done before them. One particular building catches my eye. It is a large wooden warehouse with a wide, welcoming entranceway, in front of which hangs a traditional noren curtain, announcing that the shop is open for business. Intrigued, I find myself peeking inside.
On stepping through the heavy sliding door, I gasp. It is a 300-square-metre workshop, with a triple-height vaulted ceiling. Flanked on both sides with some of the most beautiful kimonos I have ever seen, the central space is empty but for a couple of low tables, some sketching paper and a pot of pens.
The building turns out to be the workshop of Kyōji Miura, an award-winning designer of high-end contemporary kimonos for geisha and couture customers. He also has a line in noren curtains, like the one that signalled me inside, and suddenly, I really want to know how to make one.
I call a polite greeting into the vast space, and a kindly looking man with a long silver ponytail potters out of a small room in the back corner. I am sorry for the interruption, but wonder would it be possible to take a closer look at his beautiful work? A little bemused by this random foreigner who has wandered in off the street, he nods and indicates for me to go ahead.