This is the penultimate of ten facts about the creative process that I think are worth knowing. This one is about failing:
9: FAILING FEELS CRAPPY
Motivational speakers make it sound like failing is noble.
It sure doesn’t FEEL noble.
They claim Edison said something like, ‘I didn’t fail 1000 times to find a workable light bulb filament, I just eliminated 1000 ways not to do it so that I could find the one that worked.’
That quote worked only after he'd found the way that did work. I bet around the 700th try he threw that bulb to the ground, stomped on it, took a stiff drink and yelled at his wife.
Yes, we have to deal with disappointing results and rejection, but we won’t like it.
On the other hand, most of the time it won't kill us (experimenting with explosives might be an exception).
Knowing that failing sucks is good. It still won't be any fun but at least it won't be a surprise that you don't feel noble.
You may feel like retreating to your bed for an extended period of time. A man I knew did that for six months. No kidding. His wife took him his meals but he didn't talk to her. One day he got up and made his own breakfast and started talking again. The next day he went back to work.
My version used to be to start planning to move to a Greek island. Ideally a sparsely-populated Greek island. I'd plan to be a hermit.
By the time my plans were coming together I'd start to feel better. Eventually I'd feel ready to think about whether I could do something different to try to achieve whaterver it was I'd failed to do.
So far I haven't moved to a cave. Probably you won't have to, either.
(My book, Creativity Now, helps you develop a mindset that favors creativity, shows you methods for generating more ideas, gives you tools for translating your ideas into action, and inspires you with case studies of how others have achieved their creative goals. It's published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)
