My father's last sibling, Uncle Ben, passed this week.
They were close, sharing the values of family first, trust and unconditional love.
Dad was one of six siblings born to Greek immigrant parents. Mary, the oldest, died when she was ten. My dad and uncles remembered their mother crying a lot and everyone being sad. And then they got on with life because they had to. There is much I could write about my grandparents. Suffice it to say their work ethic was incredible.
As entrepreneurs the family were no strangers to failure. My Uncle Peter invented the first talking books and my grandfather invented the first iteration of Choc Tops. Uncle Ben would grab an ice cream and dunk it into my grandfather’s secret chocolate recipe. The chocolate would drip all over the floor, ensuring the wrath of my grandmother! As my grandfather watched the chocolate drip on the floor every afternoon, his brain fired. He had to awaken his mind to possibility. Through necessity, my grandfather discovered how to make the chocolate harden on contact with the ice-cream. Success. As they say, happy wife, happy life.
The photo is of my dad (the handsome one with the moustache) and my Uncle Jim, making what they called Chocolate Bombs.
A monumental failure is a monumental lesson. Failure is not a closed door to success. Unless nothing is learnt.
How might we redefine failure? While writing Celebrating Success One Failure at a Time, the mission turned to opening discussions at individual, community and organisational levels, to change the feelings associated with failure? As we get older, feelings of shame and lack of self-worth strengthen. How might we redirect these evoked feelings to a positive mindset?
There has been much talk of rewarding failure and that failure is a stepping stone to success. Yet we rarely examine the feelings we have sitting in failure and that we carry with us, consciously or subconsciously. Failure leaves a mark of permanency.
A friend was made redundant this week. She surpassed every milestone and metric yet her reaction was to doubt her ability and allow low self-confidence to surface. I directed her to Jane Huxley’s chapter in the book!
After interviewing entrepreneurs, releasing Celebrating Success One Failure at a Time, and hearing readers' responses to the questions posed in the book, it seemed synchronous to release a short online course to help redefine feelings and expectations around failure.
Seeing failure, as a series of awakenings, is a way to rise up, rather than fall into, failure's abyss of doubt and shame. An awakening is a path to clarity. We need to open our hearts and minds to rethink failure.
Just like my grandfather did, watching the dripping chocolate on the floor, joining the dots from all his experiences and solving the problem. A monumental failure became a monumental lesson and if you like Choc Tops, a monumental success.
#innovation #failure #success #resilience
If you enjoy our content, please sign up for our newsletter.
Seeing failure, as a series of awakenings, is a way to rise up, rather than fall into, failure's abyss of doubt and shame.
Seeing failure, as a series of awakenings, is a way to rise up, rather than fall into, failure's abyss of doubt and shame.
