The Beauty of Failure: How Embracing Failure Leads to Growth and Success

If It Weren’t for failures, WD-40 Wouldn’t Exist.

Standing for Water Dispersible, 40th Formula, It took 40 attempts to get it right. But they didn’t stop at WD-1, making squeaky doors a thing of the past.

So, why do we often view failure as something to avoid rather than embrace?

Like many, I held myself back for years, avoiding failure for numerous reasons, which only stalled my progress. Ultimately, failures, setbacks, and challenges are a part of life we can’t avoid.

But why are we so afraid of making them? What needs to change to embrace failures and view them as lessons?

Why Embracing Failure Drives Innovation

For every success, there are numerous failures and missteps behind it. Yet most of us have been raised to believe failure is shameful—something to avoid, hide, and try to forget about. Sound familiar?

Consider the CrowdStrike issue in 2024 and the iPhone’s Antennagate in 2011. Failures do happen; however, most never make it to public release. Each year many iPhone prototypes don’t make it to market—failures you’re unlikely to hear about.

If you reflect on a recent failure—don’t lie, I know you have one!—did it lead to growth or block your progress? Shifting our thinking about failures and errors can unlock innovation, improve collaboration, and save time and money.

To be clear, embracing failure doesn’t mean welcoming catastrophic failures or repeated errors of the same kind—that’s not what I’m advocating for. 

The goal is to normalise failure in a way that encourages failing early and quickly, while taking accountability—ultimately reducing the likelihood of major setbacks reaching the public eye.

Overcoming the Fear of Failure to Unlock Growth

Letting go of the mental grip of fear of failure is a powerful process.

We must shift our mentality to see failures, setbacks, and challenges as opportunities for progress, development, and learning, rather than as negative or avoidable issues.

Shifting this mentality isn’t easy though—it takes time to unlearn habits deeply rooted in our belief system.

I’ve broken the process into a two-phase approach that outlines how we can become aware of our mentality, make small adjustments, and back up our renewed beliefs with purposeful actions.

“The biggest misconception people have about failure is that it is entirely bad. From an engineer’s perspective, however, failure often contains valuable and insightful information.”

– Henry Petroski

Phase 1: Shift Your Mindset and Embrace Failure

More often than not, challenges are easier than you thought. All the tiresome overthinking and justifications are usually just a product of the mind.

Take some time to think really about what’s holding you back. Often, the barriers are deeper than they seem, so try and dig below the surface:

• Do past failures linger in your mind?

• Do you fear others’ judgment?

• Is your environment unsafe and blame-driven?

• Are you being honest about a weakness?

It can be multiple or a combination of issues in our mentality that lead us to fear failure. Many of us are brought up to believe failure is bad and that we should aim for perfectionism. Other times it’s external factors that affect us and lead us to avoid failure.

The principles below offer simple tools to shift your mindset, inspired by simple yet practical wisdom.

Embrace Your Strengths

Doubting your abilities often stems from believing you’re not “good enough.” Failure doesn’t define us, so make a conscious effort to reflect on your strengths and past challenges you’ve overcome.

Our thought patterns can make us overly self-critical—but we can replace those limiting beliefs with ones that affirm resilience and worth. Understand that failing and taking accountability if you do iss likely an expectation of your role.

See Challenges, Not Failures

Criticism and setbacks are inevitable, but they’re rarely about you. Failures are part of the process—not a reflection of your value. Don’t let others’ opinions or self-judgment control your progress.

Punishing yourself repeatedly for failure compounds suffering. Separate your identity from the outcome and see each challenge as an opportunity to learn. Failures are hurdles in the process, not the person.

Focus on the Facts, Not the Fears

Growth begins with honesty—both with yourself and others. Are you avoiding accountability? Or judging yourself harshly? Own your failures without letting them define you.

Being honest allows you to build trust, assess what went wrong, and take meaningful steps forward. Building a habit of honesty enables us to separate the outcome of our failure from our sense of self – You're simply stating a fact.

Value Progress, Not Perfection

Your best will vary from day to day, and that’s okay. On strong days, your best might be fantastic. On tougher days, it’s simply showing up.

Doing your best isn’t about achieving perfection but committing fully to the effort itself. When you give your best consistently, you build confidence and progress naturally, no matter the result.

When we don’t give it our best, guilt overshadows failure, driving us to try again for the wrong reasons.

“I haven’t failed—I’ve just found 1,000 ways that don’t work.” – Thomas Edison

Phase 2: Turn Failure Into Opportunities Through Action

Actions speak louder than words—so we must back our new thought process with action to cement behaviours, demonstrate our adjusted principles, and embrace accountability:

• Step out of your comfort zone: Each time you push beyond the mental barrier of comfort zones, you increase the radius of the comfort zone for the next challenge.
• Leverage testing areas: Use low-stake settings such as dev or test areas to refine and learn without fear of high-impact consequences.
• Prioritise personal development: Growth takes time. Whether through studying, practising, or up skilling—ensure you work this time into your project timelines or ask your manager for support.
• Ask questions: Questions can prevent unnecessary failures and foster collaboration, benefiting yourself and the wider team. Asking questions openly is a straightforward yet powerful way to overcome obstacles.
• Provide feedback: If your workplace doesn’t embrace failure, advocate for change. Encourage open discussions to normalise learning from failures.

For Leaders: Practice What You Preach

As leaders, we play a vital role in creating and reinforcing an environment where individuals feel secure to share ideas, challenge one another, and take responsibility for failures without fearing judgment.

To champion this mindset, leaders must model the desired behaviours from Phase 1 and Phase 2, and implement actionable changes to ensure the team not only hears reassurance but feels it.

• Robust change approval and peer review processes are critical. These help catch failures early and add layers of protection, preventing errors from having an impact.
• Transparency is essential. Replace intimidating reviews and reports with constructive discussions that focus on identifying root causes and solutions. Even shifting from “post-incident reviews” to something like things_that_didnt_work.xls will encourage openness!
• Support colleagues by reservving time for education and development, while investing in reliable test environments to provide a safe, fault-tolerant space for experimentation.
• Finally—and controversially—rewarding lessons learned from failures reinforces the idea that effort is as valuable as success, helping to reduce fear and foster innovation.

Transforming Workplaces Through Failure

When we start seeing failures as feeedback – individually and across our teams—we unlock fearless innovation and lead the way toward continuous growth. Failure isn’t the end; it’s a necessary part of the process and something we can't avoid.

When we embrace failure as a safe space for learning, failure almost becomes comfortable! I said almost...

Are you ready to start getting honest about your failures?

- Murray

🎯 Intentional errors:

• Antennagate - iPhone 4’s Antennagate occurred in 2010, not 2011.

• ajustments. - “adjustments” is spelt wrong

• up skilling - should be “upskilling.”

• reserrving - “reserving” is spelt wrong

• feeedback – “feedback” contains an extra “e”