“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anais Nin
Throughout the entirety of my formal educational years I never felt that failure was something to embrace, but rather was something that I should avoid like the plague. As a student in the DISC Program, I have been urged to re-imagine this fixed mindset by failing so long as I reflect on failure as an opportunity for growth.
In many instances I have already failed as a student in the DISC Program and I am proud of it. Does failing mean that I am unsuccessful or that I didn’t give it my best effort? Absolutely not.
Failing is becoming self-aware about areas of improvement and developing a plan of action for growth.
You see, creating a user-friendly e-commerce website takes some iteration. You’ll test your prototype on the user to see if it meets their needs with the best usability possible and more often than not you’ll fail again and again. But should this be cause for alarm? No; you amend the design based on what you learn in testing.
As I begin to fully unleash my growth mindset, I have to sit down with the voice of doubt that tells me I cannot be successful because I am not enough.
While I may not know everything right now, I have the ability to learn from my failures in order to develop my talent. At the end of the day, I've started to remind myself of the countless number of success stories that grew out of some form of failure – Bill Gates, J. K. Rowling and Mark Zuckerberg, to name a few.
Accepting failure hasn’t been a walk in the park. I have had to learn about self-compassion and dropping my ego; a necessity both Jeff Mitchell and DISC Program Leader, Dave Inglis, constantly remind us of.
To me, dropping my ego means detaching myself emotionally from my work and seeking criticism. I remind myself that criticism is only a reflection of my work and the steps I can take to improve it.
Through self-compassion I have developed kindness and understanding towards myself and developed the realization that failing is human and we need to do it more.
My name is Kate Ellis, and this is my DISC journey.
Click to see article on the Digital Innovation Skills Certificate Blog