True success is daring to fail

We often only see the finished product, not the messy journey behind it.

That thought struck me while I was listening to an interview with the Swedish artist Per Gessle, best known for his work with the band Roxette. When asked about the key to success, he replied:

“You have to dare, and you have to fail, and you have to make a fool of yourself, and you have to do terrible things to do good things.”

It’s easy to forget this when we look at people who’ve succeeded in one way or another. It’s rarely instant success from the start. More often, it’s a long trail of failures and wrong turns that eventually leads to something that works.

Those “terrible things” he mentioned? They could be anything from embarrassing mistakes to pursuing dead-end ideas. It’s all part of the necessary learning process.

The road to success

The goal is just one part of the journey. If we want to get from point A to point B, we have to go through the whole trip. It doesn’t matter if we’re holding a first-class ticket with a luxury hotel waiting, we still have to board the plane.

We can’t just sit still and try to plan every little detail. Or, well… we can. But it won’t take us anywhere. It’s like sitting in a rocking chair: it keeps us moving, but we’re not actually getting anywhere.

The road towards the goal is the real teacher. Only when we let go and throw ourselves out there are we truly on the right track, however long or winding it may be. There are no shortcuts.

We can sit on a hundred blog post drafts, but it’s only when we hit “publish” that we start to understand what it’s really about. What our role is, where we can contribute, and how to actually do it.

True success is daring to fail.