The importance of failure: |
 Sandra Chapman, PhD, Collaborative Research Thought Leader | Note: Our current series focusing on the importance of failure highlights the Collaborative’s esteemed Research Thought Leaders’ perceptions on this topic. These Thought Leaders are each nationally and internationally known experts in their respective fields. In this article, Sandra Bond Chapman, PhD, points out the importance of embracing failure. Dr. Chapman is Chief Director, Center for BrainHealth, and Dee Wyly Distinguished University Professor, The University of Texas at Dallas. You can find out more about this work at centerforbrainhealth.org; thebrainhealthproject.org. |
“In this year to come, make mistakes, because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself and changing the world.” — Novelist Neil Gaima
The greater the problem, the worse the crisis, the more likely we are to make mistakes. These mistakes can make us more resilient, or they can break us. They can strengthen or weaken our brain’s operating systems.
One of the most perplexing mysteries of our brain is why and how the same event triggers diametrically opposite actions in each of us. When we have no script to follow nor know the best response, our brain veers toward one of these paths after failure—it’s our choice:
As mentors, we have the responsibility to inspire and create a learning context that rewards students, educators, and ourselves to recognize, recover, and rebound from failures with small steps forward. Embracing the risks of failure is the best way to optimize brain growth and development. Without failure, we never tap into the brain’s greatest potential—the ability to generate new ideas and solutions, i.e., to be creative. The faster we recognize failures, the faster we make progress toward our bold goals. The only real failure is when we fail to rescue ourselves from our mistakes. Rescue from failure is one of the most effective thinking strategies to strengthen the brain’s executive function to increase our innovative thinking.
Apollo 13 is a classic example of a situation where “failure is not an option.” Racing against time, NASA engineers devised an ingenious solution to the rupture of an oxygen tank, using only the materials at hand in the spaceship when the astronauts were stranded on their way to the moon in 1970.
We each have the raw talent to kick our brain’s capabilities into gear by regularly acknowledging failed attempts and seeking new and better solutions to improve our work, our relationships, our communities, and the world around us. This is ingenuity. It is a brain skill that is rarely taught and may be the most important brain capacity to optimize the upward potential of brain and cognitive development across the lifespan. The bi-directional benefit of practicing possibility thinking skills in the context of failures not only increases the neural connectivity of the brain’s goal-directed stability network and the updating agility frontal brain network, but it also increases confidence in tackling day-to-day challenges with an open, action-oriented mind, where realizing and embracing failure is the starting point.
(Some content modified from Design Your Brain: 24 Extraordinary Ways to Fuel and Inspire Life, Chapman and Mau, in press)
One of the most perplexing mysteries of our brain is why and how the same event triggers diametrically opposite actions in each of us. When we have no script to follow nor know the best response, our brain veers toward one of these paths after failure—it’s our choice:
- Brain Drain. We experience a humiliating embarrassment, negative and demeaning self-talk that hijacks our thinking or a fear response that paralyzes our actions/behaviors and increases our anxiety and stress. This path acts much like an emergency brake that halts forward progress and keeps us fearful and wallowing in our failures as a stuck mindset.
- Brain Gain. Alternatively, when we openly embrace failure by quickly identifying rather than dismissing mistakes, we build grit. Only then can we adeptly begin to create alternative proactive responses to self-correct. By doing so, we strengthen our brain’s frontal networks—our brain’s CEO that guides clarity and discernment. When we go into problem solving mode to correct mistakes– we override our immobilizing negative self-talk. This ‘embrace the mistake’ path acts like an accelerator to run toward further learning from failures to seek alternate solutions and develop better ways to respond– much like a first responder to a fire.
As mentors, we have the responsibility to inspire and create a learning context that rewards students, educators, and ourselves to recognize, recover, and rebound from failures with small steps forward. Embracing the risks of failure is the best way to optimize brain growth and development. Without failure, we never tap into the brain’s greatest potential—the ability to generate new ideas and solutions, i.e., to be creative. The faster we recognize failures, the faster we make progress toward our bold goals. The only real failure is when we fail to rescue ourselves from our mistakes. Rescue from failure is one of the most effective thinking strategies to strengthen the brain’s executive function to increase our innovative thinking.
Apollo 13 is a classic example of a situation where “failure is not an option.” Racing against time, NASA engineers devised an ingenious solution to the rupture of an oxygen tank, using only the materials at hand in the spaceship when the astronauts were stranded on their way to the moon in 1970.
We each have the raw talent to kick our brain’s capabilities into gear by regularly acknowledging failed attempts and seeking new and better solutions to improve our work, our relationships, our communities, and the world around us. This is ingenuity. It is a brain skill that is rarely taught and may be the most important brain capacity to optimize the upward potential of brain and cognitive development across the lifespan. The bi-directional benefit of practicing possibility thinking skills in the context of failures not only increases the neural connectivity of the brain’s goal-directed stability network and the updating agility frontal brain network, but it also increases confidence in tackling day-to-day challenges with an open, action-oriented mind, where realizing and embracing failure is the starting point.
(Some content modified from Design Your Brain: 24 Extraordinary Ways to Fuel and Inspire Life, Chapman and Mau, in press)
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