Except, it’s not really about the failure itself.

You can fail a hundred times and stay stuck where you are, after all.

Instead, it’s about how you respond to the failure that will determine your trajectory.

Your natural instinct is to get a little more gun shy with each new failure.

When the failure is big, public, or (and) you’ve invested a large part of yourself in the creation, it might only take the one failure to feel as though you can never bring new work to the world again.

And while the reaction is natural, staying in this mentality is a choice.

The alternative is to curl up and hide, for a while, and then choose to come back smarter with your next project.

Not more guarded, not less vulnerable.

The work suffers when you remove yourself from it.

But more skillful, wily, clever.

More committed to process, consistency, empathy and curiosity.

With a keener understanding of who and what the work is for.

The next project might fail too. And if not that one, then the one that comes after.

Maybe both.

Maybe a dozen, or a hundred more.

But the goal isn’t a home run on every swing.

The goal is simply to stay in the game, gleaning some insight and improving your approach with each new failure, building up your resilience and guile wihle waiting for the conditions to align.

And when they do, and you get the perfect pitch down the center of the plate, you’ll be ready.