Book Review: How to Fail by Elizabeth Day

When I scheduled our book for this month (March 2020), I had no idea what was going to be happening; a global pandemic. At first glance the title seems a bit tone-deaf in the current climate. But after finishing it, I found it was a wonderful read; really uplifting and I think it’s something we need right now.

“Inspired by her hugely popular podcast, How To Fail is Elizabeth Day’s brilliantly funny, painfully honest and insightful celebration of things going wrong.”

This is a book for anyone who has ever failed. Which means it’s a book* for everyone.
If I have learned one thing from this shockingly beautiful venture called life, it is this: failure has taught me lessons I would never otherwise have understood. I have evolved more as a result of things going wrong than when everything seemed to be going right. Out of crisis has come clarity, and sometimes even catharsis.”

This Sunday Times Bestseller describes everything that the author and other interviewees have learned from things going wrong covering a whole range of subjects from tests, twenties, to work, to the hilarious chapter entitled “Being Gwyneth Paltrow”. It’s very funny in parts, and deeply sad in others. She is brutally honest about some of the most traumatic moments, including her IVF journey and miscarriage.
It leaves you feeling part of a community – realising that everyone has moments were things don’t go to plan. But accepting that it’s part of life, even an unwelcomed one, and that with some self-reflection and time, you can feel and see the positive impact of what you have left behind. This isn’t a case of blinkered positivity; it totally accepts that some things can’t have a silver lining attached to it. However, by changing the conversation to finding at lesson learned, rather that a good thing, life feels much more stable, eventually.

This is something I really recognised. When I “failed” to have a child in-between my two daughters, due to a miscarriage and a loss, there were definitely many lessons I learned. In fact, I wrote about this in my book.

Back to this book. I’ve not really read anything like this before – something that pays attention to the day to day elements of life, that when they don’t work out, they really impact how we feel about ourselves. That sometimes these perceived failures hang around for decades as described so simply in “How to Fail at Friendships”.

If you don’t plan to read this (WHY NOT?) then here are the four things I think you need to know about “How to Fail”*

If we remove failure, can we experience success?
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour”. Truman Capote. The book opens with this quote really setting the scene for the necessity of the concept of failure; I love how they are all framed as lessons learnt and that even those most “successful people” – dependent on how you define success, can list their personal failures. However, we are encouraged to remove any failures, even down to the filters on our photos and curated sharing of personal content It’s no surprise that we feel like we ‘shouldn’t’ fail.

What’s your definition of success?
Each chapter has a title of the areas of life where the author is reflecting her failures and those of her podcast guest, it makes you consider how you judge each part of your life differently? Do you set different expectations on where you place your emotional, physical and financial efforts? Where do your standards and expectations come from? Are they realistic and actually important to you, or are you led by what others tell you is important?

There is a science behind fear
Day refers to the work of Kay and Shipman’s book The Confidence Code* which shows that there is a gender difference in the concept of failure – linked to self-doubt. When Day reached to out to guests for her podcast, she found that most of the men said they don’t think they had failed; whilst the women had a long list. The brain has an area where memories linked to perceived failures exist: the Amygdala holds emotional memories. Women are more likely to revisit these negative memories than men, it’s no surprise this part of the brain is larger than men!

You can gain from a failure
As we already discussed in the previous book club book,  “Black Box Theory,” innovation and invention come from failure. Whilst some of the failures are life-altering, but acknowledging and learning from what has gone wrong, and with emotional distance, understand what we can control and change it can help us in the future.

When you have times in our life when you can see if what you haven’t achieved, then take Elizabeth Day’s great advice

“Because learning how to fail is actually learning how to succeed better. And everyone needs a bit of that.”

Want to join a supportive community that knows that success is personal, then join  Creating Careers to Enjoy today!

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