Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Careers, Workplace and Religion
Sharing stories of failure can give people the power to succeed

Sharing stories of failure can give people the power to succeed

Last updated on: September 2, 2015 at 5:21 pm by Guest Contributor

Sharing stories of failure can give people the power to succeed 2015-09-02T17:21:52-05:00 Guest Contributor

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Q: Does the storyteller, the one who went through the failure, often find new insights? Maybe the lesson wasn’t what he or she thought it was?

I would say every time — and we’ve had 54 storytellers.

If you ask people, “What would you like to share about an impactful fork in the road or struggle in your life?” everyone has something. They think about it, maybe for the first time in 10 years. So it’s almost like reopening a case file and looking at it with a new lens to say, “What did I actually do wrong? How did I feel during that? How did that affect other people?”

It’s been incredibly cathartic for almost all the storytellers. A lot of them say, “I absolutely needed to say this. I needed to be able to do this.”

It impacts the audience members, but it also impacts the people that are sharing.

Q: The Failure:Lab website talks about helping “pave the way for change by crushing the isolation and stigma around failure.” So what’s the role of failure in the process of change?

We’re living in times of exponential change that is massively affecting every part of our lives — home, work, how we communicate, business, government. All of it is changing so fast, and it’s kind of an adapt-or-die situation.

So we’re forced, whether we like it or not, to try new things. And ultimately, if you’re going to be trying a bunch of new things, then you’re going to be screwing up more than you were before.

At the same time, as we’re more digitally connected than ever, more and more people are becoming physically disconnected.

So those two things combined mean that in a lot of ways, all we’re looking at is digital veneers, pictures of people with their best face forward. We’re missing the sitting-around-the-campfire sharing of real stories. We’re missing that community. We’re missing the face-to-face.

Failure:Lab does an amazing job of bringing people together and really digging into some honest narrative. And that helps people to change — to remember that they’re not alone, to remember that a ton of other people are struggling.

It gives you hope when you see someone who looks so successful but the truth is, they’ve gone through all of these tough times just like you are. It encourages you to say, “All right! If they can overcome it, I can overcome it.”

In many ways, we’re exploring the difference between someone who goes through something and just quits and lies down versus someone who goes through something and gets back up, and continues to get back up.

That’s the crux of the change that we’re trying to create: to encourage people to keep going. In many ways, what Failure:Lab is about is resiliency. It’s not actually about failure. It’s that these people aren’t failures. They’re resilient individuals.

They have this attitude of not giving up. They’re willing to keep trying and be strong. They have this perception of, “You know what? I’m not a failure. This event was a failure, but I’m not a failure.”

Q: How did Failure:Lab start?

My friend Jordan O’Neil went to TEDx Detroit about four years ago now and heard a talk by a man named Randal Charlton, a wealthy businessman in his 70s.

Years ago, he’d moved to America from Europe with a dream of starting a restaurant and bar and had sunk his entire fortune into this. He ended up losing his business and all of his money. His wife left him. He got pneumonia. And then his daughter committed suicide.

He was raw and emotional [during the talk], and you could tell that it still hurt. And at the end, he wrapped it up by saying he eventually moved to Detroit and found a new purpose and moved on with his life.

The whole drive back to Grand Rapids, Jordan kept thinking about Randal’s talk and how it stood out because of the vulnerability and the honesty.

And Jordan thought, “What if we did an event that was just that? No bow at the end, no wrapping up. What if we just shared that?”

We talked about it for a while and wrote the format, a two-hour event with six speakers and music blended in. When we did the first event, we were terrified, because it had never been done that way with no lessons, and we didn’t know if it was going to be depressing — or if people were going to come.

And we ended up selling it out in advance, which made us even more terrified, because we’re like, “What if everyone comes and they all hate it?”

The first one was just phenomenal. It was just such a fun, amazing experience. And since then, we’ve done 10 events in three years in two countries and maybe eight cities. And yeah, it’s just been phenomenal.

Q: And as you said, this is a company; this is a business, right?

Yeah. We’re a [limited liability company] with three partners. We realized if we wanted to grow in the same way that TED did, then we can only organize so many events a year.

So about three or four months ago, we launched an independent license model. So now anyone anywhere can organize their own Failure:Lab. For a small license fee, you get access to all of our guidelines, our how-to’s, our branded documents, our program templates, poster templates, press-release templates. You get a page on our website.

Oddly enough, our first independent event was in Chandigarh, India. They organized it in three weeks and sold it out.

And we had this “Nemo” moment where, like, “My goodness! Our little idea was exported around the world.” And since then, we’ve just been growing.

We’ve also created a curriculum for organizations and companies (link is external), a course that allows people to explore what’s holding people back in their organization. What are they afraid of? Why are they not trying new things? Why are they not communicating well? Why is your environment not safe for innovation?

We’re really excited about this. A lot of the pushback that TED gets is that the seminars get everyone jazzed up for a day and then nothing happens.

That was what we wanted to solve. Like, “All right. We’re actually stirring things up in people, getting them to think. They’re opening some of the things from their past, looking at their pattern. We want to give them an ability to actually do some of this.”

Previous Post

August 31, 2015

5 kids' movies that teach us ALL things we really need to know

Next Post

September 3, 2015 NEWS: World-Renowned Artist Makoto Fujimura to Join Leadership of Fuller Seminary

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Art Audio posts Bible and Work Book Review Books Budgeting Calling Common Good Community Development Conferences Discipleship Economics Entrepreneurship Ethics Faith and Family Faith and the Marketplace Faith and the Workplace faith and work History of Work and Vocation Leadership Local Church Meaning New Blogger News Prayer Relationships Seminaries Theology of Work Uncategorized Video posts Vocation Worship Resources

Select a Month April 2026 October 2025 September 2025 July 2025 April 2025 January 2025 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 May 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 November 2023 August 2023 July 2023 April 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 June 2021 May 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 January 2020 December 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 April 2018 March 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Eden" mean in Hebrew?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Gift Delight Peace Paradise