I’ve heard baseball described as a “game of failure,” which means that even the greatest batters in the game miss close to seven out of every ten tries. Well, using that same math, creativity, too, is a game of failure where the greatest creatives who have ever lived have had success with only a tiny, tiny proportion of their efforts. Given that this is the case, it might be worth your while to make failure your friend since, as an aspiring creative, you’ll be keeping pretty steady company. Stay with me here as I show you a few reasons why failure as a creative can ultimately be a good thing.
It thickens your skin
One of the hardest lessons to learn as a creative is how to toughen up a bit when it comes to our ideas. Part of what helps us create is our sensitivity to the world around us. This is all fine and good when it comes to the creative process but when it comes to comments about our work, well that’s a little different. The reality is that not every creative effort we make will connect with people the way we hope it will. However, the more we realize that as creatives the only people we really need to please is ourselves, the easier it will become to hear less than kind comments about our work. Better yet, the more we hear those kinds of comments, the thicker our skin will become so that we can go about our business without letting unkind words get us down for long.
It’s a sign you’re putting yourself out there
If you’re “failing” when it comes to getting your work out there, that actually means you’re doing the right thing. If you don’t fail, that most likely means you’re not taking any risks and, I assure you, not failing is NOT the same as succeeding. So take heart. The more you hear no, the closer you’re coming to hearing yes.
You’re being given an opportunity to learn
It can be discouraging when you feel like you’ve worked on something creative that isn’t up to par but the good news is that even if that particular project never gets better, you’ll take away the lesson. The more you can analyze what isn’t working in your efforts, the better able you’ll be to avoid those issues in subsequent tries. Learning from mistakes is the hallmark of growth in any career.
It forces you to recommit to your goal
Nothing strengthens commitment to a goal more than repeatedly picking yourself up from a failure and moving on. Developing your creativity is not for the faint of heart but if you’re willing to recommit each time things don’t go your way, you’ll build up a resilience that will serve you well throughout your entire career.
It makes you appreciate success when it comes
When creative success does come, it’s generally the result of what I like to think of as a critical mass of effort – and failure. What this does is give you a much deeper appreciation of what it takes to have any kind of creative success. That kind of gratitude goes a long way towards motivating you even further.
It keeps you humble
On the flip side, all that failure keeps you from ever feeling like you’ve totally got the whole “creativity thing” licked. In my case, I’ve written over a thousand songs and I still get nervous before I write. That’s a good thing.
Conclusion
So, if something doesn’t go your way, take a deep breath and try not to take it so hard. This is tough to do when you’re as passionate about your work as most budding creatives are. Creativity rewards those who can weather the storm of failure and come out the other side better, stronger and more grateful.
Find out more about my creativity & innovation workshops for business teams.
Learning to write songs as a way of exploring and solving problems has the additional – and powerful – benefit of providing you with a set of critical skills for facing problems you haven’t yet anticipated. In essence, the more we open ourselves up to the creativity that songwriting introduces into in our lives and work, the more we’ll be future-proofing our problem-solving approach. Below are four ways that learning to write songs will help us with any and all issues that can – and undoubtedly will – arise in the future.
The ability to think laterally
Problem-solving approaches are infinite but it’s also human nature to rely on one particular approach which has served us well in the past. The problem is that as brokerage houses are fond of saying, “past results are no guarantee of future success.” Using songwriting to explore different ways of looking at the same problem can open up a variety of solutions that a prior “go to” approach might not reveal. Instead of thinking in our accustomed linear way, learning to write songs encourages lateral thinking which will allow us consider alternate approaches and paradigms in service of a novel solution to a novel problem.
Enhanced communication skills
Songwriting is one of the oldest and most effective forms of communication that humanity has. There’s a good reason that songs have lasted this long. They are a miraculously compact and meaningful way to communicate an idea. When it comes to solving problems, communication is a key factor in how a problem is not only described but also in how possible answers to your questions are presented. The better our ability to communicate, the greater the likelihood of convincing others to join us in our search for a solution.
Better collaboration
The use of co-writing to create a song better than any one of the individual writers could have written on their own is a direct mirror of how effective collaboration works in a business context. Bringing in diverse experiences and points of view and allowing each participant to contribute their particular set of strengths to the effort increases by an order of magnitude the likelihood of a solving a future problem that lacks the precedent of an easy or familiar solution.
A willingness to take risks
When a business team steps out of their comfort zone to learn a new skill like writing a song, they are clearly taking a risk. This risk takes the form of vulnerability, the loss of control and the introduction of a certain amount of chaos into a well-ordered and productive routine. However, when my business teams complete their songwriting assignments and end up with a finished song just an hour or so after they’ve begun, it serves as a reminder that the reward on the other side of risk can be exhilarating. Signing on to solve an unknown problem can feel equally risky but the positive experience that a successful songwriting session brings provides an increased willingness to face the challenge – and risk – of solving a new problem.
Conclusion
The creativity, empathy, improved communication and collaborative skills that learning to write songs brings are a set of versatile and powerful tools. These tools work both for solving current “known” problems and, more importantly, they will work for future “unknown” problems where past solutions no longer apply.
-Cliff
Find out more about my creativity & innovation workshops for business teams.