The Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting Are Spawning New Definitions of Success and Failure
Accept them at your own risk
The Great Resignation, the Great Regret, and Quiet Quitting have created a cultural revolution not seen in this country since the introduction of such “radical and revolutionary” concepts like unionization, employee ownership, and company-matched retirement plans.
In short, the last two years have brought a collision of ideologies that’s creating chaos, confusion, and even resentment toward the traditional approach to achieving the American dream.
But the dust will settle and so will we — eventually.
However, in the interim, the concepts of work, career, and living a balanced and rewarding life remain in turmoil, creating plenty of anxiety about the future.
The most frequently mentioned concern? The concepts of success and failure.
Because of my open invitation to answer questions from readers of my book, Better Mondays, lots of folks are emailing me, expressing their fears over possible failure and the likelihood of missing out on the success they hope to achieve.
Some of their questions made me realize the words themselves — success and failure — are being redefined as absolutes . . .
Embrace success.
Above all, avoid failure.
And never the two shall meet.
It will make more sense if I share a few of the questions I received:
I have to go back to the office, but I don’t want to give up the freedom of working remote. I have a family of four to support and I need the money so I can’t just quit. What are my options?
I quit my last job during the pandemic and received a new job offer. What if I take the job and can’t cut it? What if I fail to meet the manager’s expectations and I get fired? I refuse to go back to living under my parent’s roof. That would embarrass the hell out of me.
I’m ready to start my own business, but if I sink every penny I’ve saved into my new business, and then the economy takes a dive, I could end up losing everything. I just can’t take that kind of risk. Any suggestions?
The commonality is obvious . . . lots of people are focusing on the “what if’s” of life.
My initial response was a commonsense approach borrowed from an old therapy technique called, Rational Emotive Therapy (RAT).
I asked, “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Then I asked for three possible outcomes of their worst-imagined failure, including their options for recovery and the specific actions they would take.
My readers’ response? Here’s the most representative . . .
“You don’t understand. I’m not focused on economic concerns. I’m saying I don’t want to fail. I don’t want to waste time making the wrong choice. I’ve made too many wrong choices in the past and I have to get the next one right.”
I’d misinterpreted their questions.
I thought they were asking how to best measure and mitigate the risk associated with work and career changes. Instead, they were overwhelmingly centered on failure avoidance — at any cost.
I tried again. Here’s a synopsis of what I shared with them.
As children, we learn that success is good and failure is bad.
We accept those definitions because we tend to look at any outcome as a final endgame. We have to get it right the first time or it’s all over. It’s an easy conclusion to come to at that age, because our “final outcomes” seldom last more than a day.
As we get older, we see the world as a field of possibilities waiting to be explored. We want to ask out the cute blond in English class. We want to try out for the football team. We want to convince our parents that we can be trusted with the family car.
So we took a chance. Sometimes we won, other times we failed.
Winning — receiving a “yes” — brought a rush of euphoria, confidence, and satisfaction. And yet, receiving a “no” seldom altered our life. We shook it off and moved on.
We asked out the brunette instead. We tried out for the baseball team and discovered we’re a better base-runner than line-backer. We saved money from a part-time job and bought our own car. You might even say we did those things — and came out ahead — because of the failures that proceeded them.
Sure, we all want to avoid the unpleasant, embarrassing, and often financially devastating effects of failure. But realistic success comes from determining what went wrong, adjusting our actions, and trying again.
Failure also defines the limits of success — at that point in time.
Let’s say we start an online teddy bear business. We put up a website. We post pictures of a prototype on social media. We get orders. A month later, our business has exceeded our expectations and we feel confident about increasing our marketing efforts.
We spend money on advertising. Results are great! We’re swamped with business. Every morning we review a growing backlog of new orders.
But a month later, we realize our supplier of teddy bears isn’t shipping as quickly as they used to. A week later they stop shipping altogether. The supplier explains they’ve suffered a major setback in production and won’t be able to ship all those back-orders for at least six months.
You contact other teddy bear manufacturers, but are told it will take at least 120 days to gear up their production to meet your demand.
Bottom line? You’re screwed.
You’re forced to return the orders with an explanation of what happened.
You were successful until you weren’t — because something stopped your success.
A typical response would be to blame yourself for not having a backup vendor. I say typical because we tend to think that success and failure are terms that define us. But in reality, they define a state of stability.
Success equals high levels of stability.
Things are good. Life is flowing forward. The rewards are obvious.
Failure puts our goals and objectives in a state of volatile disruption. Maybe it’s something we didn’t anticipate. Or perhaps we didn’t evaluate the risk accurately. Regardless of the reason, we need to reassess the process, make corrections, and try again.
Get the idea? Success and failure are not polar opposites as much as they are simply definitions of our current status. They are as interrelated as day and night.
Here’s the Takeaway . . .
Every failure brings you one step closer to success.
This isn’t some buzz-phrase taken from a motivational poster. It’s a valid, proven, and sometimes downright unpleasant fact of accomplishing anything.
Unfortunately, some folks think of failure as the end. “Hey, I tried. I failed. I’m done.”
They may even see their mistakes as a reflection of personal incompetency. But success and failure are simply ways of describing where you are in the process of getting from here to there.
Giving up while enjoying a cycle of success doesn’t make a lot of sense. Neither does quitting during a cycle of failure. How long you stay in “failure mode” depends on what you learn from it and the actions you take to move forward. Failure is never permanent — unless it stops you from trying again.
The next time you face a decision brought on by a temporary life-reversal, remember that failure is never self-defeating without your permission. By stopping too soon, you could be depriving yourself of learning the very thing you need to know to be able to achieve the goal you want. So don’t let the risk of failure stop you from starting — or if necessary, starting over.
Thanks for reading,
Success Point 360 | The Takeaway Newsletter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Amazon
Roger A. Reid, Ph.D. is a certified NLP trainer with degrees in engineering and business. Roger is the author of Better Mondays and Speak Up, and host of Success Point 360 Podcast, offering tips and strategies for achieving higher levels of career success and personal fulfillment in the real world.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed the article, let me know by clicking the “Like” button below and/or leaving a Comment!