Searching for Success

What I’ve learned so far from operating networks ... part 2 of … who knows 🤷🏻‍♂️

Feb 15, 2025

Carrying on from What I’ve learned so far from operating networks ... part 1

For me it started with failure

Failure will be a big part of your professional career, whether big or almost insignificant. And unless you understand that failure isn’t the end, it’s an opportunity to learn and grow, it has the potential to consume you and dictate your path.

“… over the years I have cultivated a unique relationship with failure. I invite it. I survive it. I appreciate it. And then I mug the sh*t out of it.”

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams

I had always managed to achieve at school, and for the most part learning and academia came easily to begin with, or at least I thought it did.

As a result it’s human nature to start to place ourselves on that ever increasing pedestal, which gets higher with every achievement, accomplishment and in education system every time we move up a class. Compound those factors with pride, naivety, prosperity and social pressures; no wonder we have such a powder keg of emotions in these moments.

The problem with that is that in modern society we’re not equipping these minds with the tools to deal with failure. Or reminding them to fail early and often, so that “the fall” is smaller and they grow, adapt and learn how to survive and then thrive from failure.

I was lucky, that I had people around me to pick me up when I stumbled and or fell, either academically, in life or in sports; so in those moments for others, remember that not everyone is so lucky. And if possible, be that person to help them on their way back up.

For the longest time I saw myself as having a Fixed Mindset (although I wasn't sure how to frame it at the time, also see Downstream/Finite Thinking), as I couldn't see myself learning or growing within my own environment and I thought my knowledge / ability to learn had an upper bound. However, since turning 30, engaged a Growth Mindset (although, again I wasn't sure how to frame it at the time, also see Upstream/Infinite). I noticed that actually there was ways of self reflecting and realising my achievements without requiring exams or grades or some external measurement.

So my current ‘mindset’ is to find my ‘Peter Points’ and explore past them … the difficulty is identifying the points and finding opportunities to explore.

We have to fail to move forward

Maybe hanging development on failure, adds too many conversations in the modern age, maybe the re-frame is ‘we have to grow to move forward’.

Remember that the human race would have not moved forward if there wasn’t those amongst us who tried and failed. And by gaining those experiences, as we'll talk about later, especially in diverse fields, can help you exponentially in the future.

“America’s asset is, simply, risk taking and the use of optionality, this remarkable ability to engage in rational forms of trial and error, with no comparative shame in failing again, starting again, and repeating failure.”

”… when an organism directly benefits from harm; with evolution, something hierarchically superior to that organism benefits from the damage. From the outside, it looks like there is hormesis, but from the inside, there are winners and losers.

…

For instance, if you drink a poisonous substance in small amounts, the mechanism by which your organism gets better is, according to Danchin, evolutionary within your system, with bad (and weak) proteins in the cells replaced by stronger—and younger— ones and the stronger ones being spared (or some similar operation). When you starve yourself of food, it is the bad proteins that are broken down first and recycled by your own body—a process called autophagy.

This is a purely evolutionary process, one that selects and kills the weakest for fitness. But one does not need to accept the specific biological theory (like ageing proteins and autophagy) to buy the general idea that survival pressures within the organism play a role in its overall improvement under external stress.”

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

So try new things, get your hands dirty and be prepared to say “I don’t know, however I want to find out!”.

As a youth I managed to work several jobs; helping out in a small steel fabrication workshop, delivering papers, doing several jobs on a small holdings, and working in the local shops.

The immediate take away from those experiences is that at that age, early mornings suck (and for most still will for the foreseeable future), however by doing many things and exploring several avenues of potential futures it opens the mind to possibilities and helps you understand where your limits are, where you need to improve and what your good at. It also starts the basis of a worth ethic. Yes, I said worth, not work, however you’ll need to be prepared to put some work in too.