Thank you for sharing this! It takes a lot of courage to talk about one’s “failures”, because we’re constantly bombarded with (often fake or incomplete) success stories. Social media tell us we’re not beautiful enough, not smart enough, not rich and successful enough. As a management consultant, I learned to pursue “best practice”, to learn from these success stories and apply their principles of success to my own projects. It took me a while to figure out that this is complete bogus and almost never works in real life.
Im 61 now, and my list of “failures” is far longer than yours: I founded four start-ups, none of which became successful. I wrote three novels, none of which got published. I invented more than a hundred board-games, none of which was played outside of the circle of my family and friends (who hate being my play-testers by now). I tried to become a musician, song-writer, and poet, and failed miserably at it. I developed a computer game which I published in one of my start-ups, but despite nice reviews we sold only about 5% of the games we produced (these were the 90s, when computer games came in paper boxes with a CD in it). We got lucky, though—the storage house of our distributor burned down and their insurarnce covered a part of the production costs. I launched a YouTube channel, posting a video every week for a year, getting me to 238 followers.
To me, all those failures aren’t things I wish I hadn’t done. They weren’t mistakes. They were tries that didn’t work out. But at least I did try, and that is a good thing—far better than just doing nothing because you’re afraid of failing. On our death bed, they say, we mostly regret the things we didn’t do, rather than our mistakes. So you should be as proud of your so-called “failures” as I am of mine. And, if you can overcome your depression, you should continue trying. Not because you have to, but because you want to—because it’s much nicer doing things you believe in than doing what some manager tells you to do.
By the way, my fourth novel got published when I was 47 and became a German bestseller. Today, I am a full-time writer with more than 50 books published (https://karl-olsberg.jimdo.com/english/). A lot of them are flops. Some are not.
Edit: Shortly after writing this, my publisher informed me that they weren’t publishing the 5th book of a children’s book series, which I had already finished and they had already paid me for, due to lack of success of the first four books, and because of the paper shortage. Well … I told them that I’m sorry to hear that and that I’ll try to think of a better idea for the next series, which is what I’m going to do.
I wish you all the best for recovery from your depression. Two of my sons had depressions, so I know it’s a serious burden, but I also know it can be overcome.
Thank you for sharing this! It takes a lot of courage to talk about one’s “failures”, because we’re constantly bombarded with (often fake or incomplete) success stories. Social media tell us we’re not beautiful enough, not smart enough, not rich and successful enough. As a management consultant, I learned to pursue “best practice”, to learn from these success stories and apply their principles of success to my own projects. It took me a while to figure out that this is complete bogus and almost never works in real life.
Im 61 now, and my list of “failures” is far longer than yours: I founded four start-ups, none of which became successful. I wrote three novels, none of which got published. I invented more than a hundred board-games, none of which was played outside of the circle of my family and friends (who hate being my play-testers by now). I tried to become a musician, song-writer, and poet, and failed miserably at it. I developed a computer game which I published in one of my start-ups, but despite nice reviews we sold only about 5% of the games we produced (these were the 90s, when computer games came in paper boxes with a CD in it). We got lucky, though—the storage house of our distributor burned down and their insurarnce covered a part of the production costs. I launched a YouTube channel, posting a video every week for a year, getting me to 238 followers.
To me, all those failures aren’t things I wish I hadn’t done. They weren’t mistakes. They were tries that didn’t work out. But at least I did try, and that is a good thing—far better than just doing nothing because you’re afraid of failing. On our death bed, they say, we mostly regret the things we didn’t do, rather than our mistakes. So you should be as proud of your so-called “failures” as I am of mine. And, if you can overcome your depression, you should continue trying. Not because you have to, but because you want to—because it’s much nicer doing things you believe in than doing what some manager tells you to do.
By the way, my fourth novel got published when I was 47 and became a German bestseller. Today, I am a full-time writer with more than 50 books published (https://karl-olsberg.jimdo.com/english/). A lot of them are flops. Some are not.
Edit: Shortly after writing this, my publisher informed me that they weren’t publishing the 5th book of a children’s book series, which I had already finished and they had already paid me for, due to lack of success of the first four books, and because of the paper shortage. Well … I told them that I’m sorry to hear that and that I’ll try to think of a better idea for the next series, which is what I’m going to do.
I wish you all the best for recovery from your depression. Two of my sons had depressions, so I know it’s a serious burden, but I also know it can be overcome.