Additional Skills: Proficient at Failure
Ok, I’m going to toot my own horn a little here… there’s a lot of stuff that I’m pretty good at.
To define pretty good (just because I want to make sure we’re on the same page here): let’s go with ‘showing above-average capabilities at a particular task or skill'. Say for instance, playing the cello; most definitely above average. Some might even say I’m a pro— see what I did there?
*insert laughter here*
Other skills that I’m pretty good at include making up the lyrics to a wide variety of road-trip songs, organizing vast amounts of information in an excel sheet, coming up with bad jokes (see above for reference), tripping over my own feet, killing house plants, trying, and failing.
Actually, I’m really good at that last one—failing. You’d might even say that I fail in a spectacular way. And I do it often, because I’d also dare to say that it’s one of the most important skills I’ve developed in my 29 years of (not) accomplishing things. Important, because failure has been my most valuable learning tool. Cliché, I know, but for good reason.
I make a point to say this, not because I think this is a skill that I’ve developed in any unique or visionary way, nor am I some kind of prodigy failure (oof, that statement has a lot of baggage). I say this, because I’ve become rather proud of my ability to fail. I think it’s a skill worth bragging about, and it’s worth passing on to my students.
I’ve been on a huge Brené Brown kick the last several months. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, stop now and go watch her Ted talk here. Then come back and finish reading this—pretty please. Dr. Brown has devoted her life to researching human emotions and traits such as vulnerability, shame, courage, authenticity, empathy, joy, etc. You know, qualities that we admire in other people but do everything possible to avoid experiencing ourselves. Humanity in its rawist form—things we love the idea of but hate talking about. And she talks about them… a lot. If you get about waist-deep into her research (is now a good time to mention she has a Netflix special?!), you’ll learn that she draws inspiration from a speech made by Teddy Roosevelt in 1910.
Here’s an excerpt from the speech, nicknamed “Man in the Arena”:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
I mention this particular speech and my recent Brené Brown kick for two reasons:
My definition of failure and what it looks like in my life has changed drastically in the last few years—much of that as a result of trudging through this study of vulnerability. In a way, failure has evolved from my biggest enemy to somewhat of a dear friend.
As a performer and music teacher, I’ve found that this new friendship has completely reinvented how I approach risk-taking and failure in both of those roles.
I’m going to take a step back for just a second here and revisit some of my earlier encounters with failure. I won’t go through all of them, because I think there’s a page limit on these blog posts…
*dreamy harp sounds and clouding of the screen*
When I was in college, my teacher at the time had several very memorable exercises we would use in lessons. There’s one in particular that I think of often, maybe just because it’s something I still come back to regularly in my own practice.
*hey- look at that! I WAS paying attention*
It went something like this: I would take a piece of music that I was working on, start from the very beginning, and play through… until I make a mistake. Just one mistake, and the buzzer would sound. Go back to the top and start over again. The idea was to replicate performing, where you really do get just one chance to ‘nail it’. It didn’t matter if the passage in question was a half-a-page or an entire concerto. If the unfortunate mishap happened in the second-to-last measure, back to the starting line you go. We could adjust the definition of ‘mistake’ to best serve the purpose at the time; missing a note completely, playing out of tune, backwards bowings, a clumsy shift, neglecting vibrato… you get the idea. Many of the ‘mistakes’ were not something that were heard, but felt—not in the product, but in the execution. I had to hold myself accountable for technique errors that even my teacher might not notice at first. It was a completely new level of self-criticism. Grueling as it was, the intentions of the exercise were certainly good:
Train awareness and consistency of technique, and
Develop a high level of focus over a length of time.
Both of the above are crucial skills when you’re trying to complete a very complicated sequence of tasks in front of a lot of people (and your adrenaline level is running sky-high).
I made a huge amount of improvement on both of those fronts, but I also unintentionally learned other *less desirable* lessons. First, I learned that mistakes were something that I should fear. And second, that I would be destined to constantly notice more shortcomings in my own playing than anyone else ever could. Hold that thought—I’ll revisit this one in another post.
Fear. There are so many names for it: stage fright, performance anxiety, nerves, the shakes, pre-show jitters, etc. But the thing is, playing the cello in fear was not supposed to be part of the process. Avoiding failure was not the ultimate goal, though that’s exactly what it became.
I perform often enough now that I can pretty accurately outline how the whole experience is going to go. Depending on the venue, I’ll likely start to feel the nerves a few hours beforehand. My symptoms include cold hands, sweaty palms, being simultaneously hungry and nauseous, becoming even more introverted than normal, and yawning… constantly. If any combination of those things are happening, I know everything is going along as per usual. Stay away from caffeine, eat half a banana, turn on some Frank Sinatra, take a few well-rehearsed deep breaths, and we’re good to go.
However, I also know that those nerves—and the tension that comes with them—will follow me on stage. They always do. Every single time. Picking up the bow and drawing those first few notes out of the cello feels similar to jumping off a bike after 50 miles and beginning to run (triathlon metaphor for the win). Foreign, wobbly, and uncomfortable. But again, that is a still predictable part of the gig… as per usual.
Here’s where it gets interesting. The thing that I’ve noticed about my performance routine, which I find equally fascinating and frustrating, is that the discomfort disappears with the tiniest mistake. As soon as the possibility of a flawless performance is taken off the table, the pressure that comes along with that expectation leaves with it. And the fear of failure retreats back into the dark place where it came from. Then I’m free to get lost in the music, to take risks, to connect with the audience instead of pretending I don’t notice them. My sense of time completely disappears, and I give myself permission to fall in love with the moment. There’s no other feeling like it in the world.
My performances consistently hit a completely new level once I move through the first ‘failure’; it’s like a right of passage that must happen every time I step out on stage or into an audition room. Once I’ve proven to myself that I am not capable of perfection, I can also let myself feel like a master of the instrument. Completely in control. Un-phased by the task ahead. An artist.
Yep, the irony is real.
That brings me to my question here: why does failure have to be the prerequisite for hitting that kind of flow? Why does it have to be a turning point in the performance and not just an expected and welcomed part of it?
Replace the word ‘performance’ with the words ‘career’ or ‘dream’ or ‘life’ in that sentence, and I think we would all be jumping in on the conversation. There is no doing without failing.
As a teacher, one of my goals is to help my students to embrace failure by understanding the necessity of it. Well, one of the first steps in developing a skill of your own is to simply imitate others who have mastered it. Meaning that one of the most important jobs I have as a teacher is to embrace the benefits of my own failures—and be transparent with them.
Every young musician (or really anyone in general) has struggled with standing on the edge of what seems like a Grand Canyon—this insurmountable gap that separates where they are from where they want to be. That place possibly being where they see their teachers and mentors. We put teachers in classrooms and music studios, because they have so much wisdom and experience. Makes sense, right? But we also tend to idolize the wisdom and experience that comes with great success and accomplishment while ignoring the wisdom and experience that comes with struggle and failure. In the words of the great philosopher, Yoda, “the greatest teacher, failure is.”
Don’t we owe it to our students to teach them how to fail, too? You can not possibly figure out what it means to play the cello well if you never examined the squeaks, twangs, sour notes, and screeches closely enough to know why they are so. Failure is not the opposite of success, it is the path that leads to it. We all know it—whether or not we know that we know it. We even have a common phrase for moments of success in lieu of failure: dumb luck.
I have a rather interesting exercise I do with those aspiring cellists who study with me during their college years. I like to make sure they’re equipped with a decent resumé before graduating. It’s an important tool for a young person in any field of study before they trek out into the scary world of job hunting. So to aid them in creating their own resumé, I’ll send them a copy of [one of] mine as a framework. See above about developing skills by imitating others. However, after a few rounds of making a resumé a required assignment for applied cello lessons (yes, I see the humor there), I noticed that having my version as a reference seemed to be more frustrating for them than helpful. Because while I’m only *cough* slightly older, I do have quite a few more tangible items to take up space on my ‘I’ve done stuff’ list.
“But how am I ever going to make mine look like yours? I barely have anything to put on here!”
And so, we introduce the Failure Resumé.
“Sarah, what in the world is a Failure Resumé? I’ve never heard of such a ridiculous thing!”
Oh, I’m so glad you asked *pushes glasses up nose*. A Failure Resumé is exactly the opposite of a traditional resumé. Instead of listing your qualifications, experience, and most impressive accomplishments, you fill the pageor in my case, many pages— with all of the rejections, unachieved goals, and biggest disappointments.
My own Failure Resumé highlights the many orchestra auditions I didn’t win, schools I got rejected from (some more than once), interviews that never saw job offers, concerts that no one showed up to, projects that have been half-baked for years, harsh criticism, summer festivals I couldn’t afford, ensembles that fell apart, scholarships and grants that went to someone else, degrees that I never finished (yep), emails that still have no responses, applications that didn’t go anywhere past the submit button—oh, and this blog. The blog post that I started a week two years ago, and well, here we still are. I’m still editing it… come back next week, maybe there will be something new and interesting.
My Failure Resumé, as you might have guessed by now, is a good bit longer than the resumé that I send off to potential employers, and it grows exponentially faster.
The point of the Failure Resumé is not to be shamed into recalling all of our various shortcomings (I’m hesitant to even call them that), nor is it meant to glorify them into something we can use to measure worth via persistence. It’s simply a practice of recognizing that failure is something we will all experience and likely encounter far more often than success. And more importantly, it’s a practice of acknowledging that failure is rarely an ending point. In fact, I’d declare it the most perfect place to start—after all, where else can you possibly go but ‘on’?
Now, I’m not trying to preach that we should hold failure and success with the same regard; as being equally valuable and therefore one and the same. But I think there is a tendency to label them as opposites—success vs. failure, light vs. dark, good vs. bad, Ohio State vs. Michigan—when they are actually quite similar. We see them as either/or when they tend to be both/and. They are life-long companions, standing shoulder to shoulder on either side of the 50-yard line.
What if we took that cliché question “what would you do if you could not fail?” and added a follow-up: “what would you still do if you knew that you would?”
What if, instead of editing our own failures out of our bios and CVs and lunch conversations, they were seen as a normal and necessary part of the learning process?
My entire cello career started with a healthy dose of failure and disappointment. It all went down at the ripe old age of 9. I took my very first audition ever for the city-wide orchestra of very small musicians, Cincinnati Jr. Strings. I can still picture it; our concert uniform included button-up shirts that were 3 sizes too big, white stockings, and red suspenders holding up our tea-length black skirts. We looked like candy canes. Absolutely adorable.
The audition was rough; I distinctly remember a moment of panic during the sight-reading portion, when I saw notes on the page that I hadn’t learned to play yet. There were definitely tears. And—probably not a surprise here—I didn’t get into the orchestra. Actually, I didn’t get in the next year either. Or the year after that… You know the old saying—“4th time’s a charm.”
Isn’t it curious that the kid who struggled so much to climb that very first tiny step on the musical ladder is also the one who, twenty years later, is still at it? Now I’m getting ready to start a DMA program… though that took me a few tries as well.
The goal was never to avoid failure; it was to be an artist of it. It’s a work in progress. Turns out that it’s just like any other skill—it takes some practice.
Now go—chase the crazy big things—and fail spectacularly.