Lurking under beds and beyond closet doors of artists everywhere is the slimy bogeyman called failure. He seems to haunt our every move. My morning coffee is spoiled by the thought, “What if I don’t get everything done today?” I sit down to write, and I’m blocked by the nagging suspicion that my ideas will bore readers to tears. I go to bed and dream restless dreams of failed exams, disappointed employers, and an inevitable rejection letter for my manuscript.
The fear of failure paralyzes our ability to create or even think straight. We get so caught up in feeling insufficient that we stop trying altogether. We have plenty of logical reasons to dislike failing, but fear not! We also have a way to keep creating in the face of failure.
Why We Hate Failing
Reason #1: Failure is depressing. Stepping back from something you’ve created and thinking, “Well that’s terrible,” can arouse a lot of gloom. We instinctively avoid those painful encounters at all costs.
Reason #2: We fear other people’s opinions. When you show someone your book, painting, or song, you open yourself up to hear their opinion of it. And those opinions sometimes hurt. We like to think of our art as an extension of ourselves, so your coworker handing back an unfinished book saying, “I just couldn’t get into it,” feels like a personal attack. We weave our worth into what we create, and we make our family, employers, and social media followers the gods who judge us.
Reason #3: We lack skills to reach the idea’s potential. You can see it in your mind, the next “Starry Night,” a masterpiece of color and movement with poetic philosophical underpinnings. But then you try to paint it. And it looks nothing like what you envisioned. We know in our minds what a finished product should look like, and when our skill set is unable to achieve it, we become disillusioned with the project and ourselves: “Sure, the idea sounds great, but I could never actually write that.” “It would be a great song, but I don’t know enough about music to write it.” If we can’t make it look the way we want, why bother, right? And frankly, it’s easier to avoid trying and never know if we could have succeeded.
Reason #4: Failing wastes time. Why spend time on something we struggle with instead of something we do well? The risk doesn’t seem worth it, and working in our comfort zones generates far more productive results. We’re just being practical.
Reason #5: Our mistakes must embarrass the big man upstairs. And this reason paralyzes us the most. Our failed attempts at creation can hardly be glorifying to God, the ultimate creator. What must the artist of galaxies think of the lumpy mess of clay on my desk that was supposed to look like a cat? Pathetic. I can’t bear to fail because, in the end, my washed-up attempts reveal just how far from God’s perfection I really am.
How to Do Stuff Anyway
Day after day, we face the bogeyman of “what ifs” and “not enoughs” and decide he’s just too big to conquer. So how do we get out of the funk? What does it take to create boldly in the face of fear?
We begin with a painfully humble look at where our worth comes from. I recognize that my worth can’t come from what I create, but defeating the bogeyman requires that I take it a step further. I have to see honestly that I’m not worth anything on my own. As Isaiah poetically put it, “When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags.”[i] Ouch. Isaiah takes my propensity to find my worth in my art, and he cuts it off at the knees. Only the one who bought me with a price can determine my value. And what about my art? How do I face that horrendous painting from middle school that my mom still hangs proudly? If Christ defines our worth, we can view our art as a separate entity from ourselves. Your art may be a flop, but that doesn’t mean you are.
Next, we recognize beauty. What does beauty mean, really? In the world of “terms with vague definitions,” beauty is a principal offender. If beauty is “in the eye of the beholder,” then God, as the ultimate objective being, defines beauty. So what does God call beautiful and valuable? Hebrews 11 shows God commending some stand-out followers, yet even a cursory look at the chapter shows that he has chosen to commend some pretty suspect people: a compulsive liar, a cheater, a murder, a prostitute, and a guy who got so wasted he flashed his whole family, to name a few. God obviously lauds these people for something other than perfection; he calls them beautiful and valuable because of their faith. For taking the step and trying. He cares more about our willingness to try than whether or not we become raging worldly successes with millions of followers.
We have a misguided understanding of what glorifies God. As Isaiah already pointed out, God’s ultimate glory comes from something beyond the rags of our actions and creations. Instead, our willingness to be satisfied in him regardless of our failure or success puts the focus back on him. As John Piper puts it, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”[ii] When we choose satisfaction in God and in the way he made us—even the things we do poorly—we choose to create and fail for a greater purpose; we create beauty and fail to the glory of God.
Failing Boldly
Stage Director William Ball says the ability to make mistakes creates growth, and that without failure, we stagnate. “Failure is the threshold of knowledge.... We congratulate ourselves for failing. We fail boldly.”[iii] The willingness to fail boldly opens a myriad of new avenues for creativity. When you’re not locked into perfection, you free yourself to explore what Emily Dickinson called the doors and windows of possibility.[iv]
Failing boldly sounds exciting, but where do we start? We needn’t fail arbitrarily, just for the sake of failing (although that might be an interesting experiment). Pinpoint an area in your life where the fear of failing has kept you from trying. If you can’t think of one, try brainstorming around the question, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”
As you dive into trying something new, revisiting that lump of clay, or finally starting that book you’ve been avoiding, keep in mind a few other thoughts from Ball. First, consider your measure of success. We’ve taken perfection off the board and given ourselves permission to fail, so how do we gauge the success of an artistic endeavor? We choose a new standard for what it means to succeed: growth of character, the discipline of practice, increased knowledge, giving beauty to your audience, and inspiring reflection are just a few options. And second, make the choice to “forgive yourself as you go along.”[v] Benjamin Zander suggests, when you make a mistake, simply say, “How fascinating!” and move on.[vi] A space that welcomes and embraces failure is one of the most beautiful things you can create. So step into your art without fear.
[i] Isaiah 64:6
[ii] John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy Of God In Missions, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010), 50.
[iii] William Ball, A Sense of Direction: Some Observations on the Art of Directing, (New York: Drama Publishers, 1984), 45.
[iv] Emily Dickinson, “I Dwell in Possibility,” Poetry Foundation, accessed June 3, 2020, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52197/i-dwell-in-possibility-466.
[v] Ball, 49.
[vi] Benjamin Zander, The Art of Possibility, (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000), 31.
Callie Johnson works as Editorial Assistant at Kelli Sallman Writing and Editing with a bachelor’s degree in Theatre Arts and Creative Writing from Calvary University. She previously interned with Kelli for two years, working as proofreader and copyeditor on several manuscripts. Her strange obsessions include kerning, East Coker, and the sound of cows chewing.