by Jamie Clubb

Created on: January 30, 2010

For some reason the topic of failing is popular yet again and clearly in the public consciousness. I am not a football fan, but I am sure a certain incident happening this year (2007 to those of you reading this in the archive section) might have something to do with this sudden interest in addressing losing. Nevertheless just as the USA seem to define everything by success - as best exemplified by the famous American football coach Vince Lombardi - “Winning is not a sometime thing, it’s an all time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing” - so the British become very philosophical about failure.

On 5th December 2007 I was on my way to teach a martial arts class, where I encourage tenacity and try to inspire fighting spirit when Radio 4 hosted a superb organized discussion on the subject of failure in their “Off the Page” series: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/offthepage/pip/ccuhb In this programme three authors with backgrounds in pop music, media relations and sport discuss their definitions of failure and how they drew tremendous strength through dealing with failure. Of the three I found Amanda Patel’s the most inspirational. We can empathize with the heroic failings of John Otway. His complete embracing of what he sees as his shortcomings are the cornerstone of British storytelling perhaps going back to our cultural roots. If you think about it King Arthur makes some devastating mistakes and some our greatest literary heroes are flawed. And when the epic Old English poem Beowulf was brought to the big screen the writers felt they had to make its one dimensional hero have a fatal internal weakness that negates his bravery. The sports correspondent Jim Wright brings out the debate on whether being competitive is necessary. Despite all three of the authors being very conscious of how they had failed all agreed that competition was still a good thing and how much can be learnt through failure. Amanda Patel was so inspirational because her perceived failings took on so many different forms, including the grossly unfair assumption that if a woman can’t have a baby she is some how a failure, yet, as she announces in her written introduction, many see her as a success. A chord that Amanda Patel touches upon is that you will probably fail far more than you succeed. I guess that is why

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