Re-frame Failure
Over the summer I went to watch a PWA wave competition in Pozo. It was inspiring and you can watch the highlights on windsurfing.tv! For me having just found out that my research protocol publication had just been rejected by the journal I submitted it to, it took on a whole new dimension. Unlike a lot of professional sports the for the conditions to be perfect they have to be pretty intense. This means that even the pro's end up crashing a lot, this too is also unusual for professional sports. To be a success in windsurfing it means you have to be able to flourish in what other see as adverse conditions while shrugging of failure and using it to fuel your next success.
Sitting on an incredibly windy beach (50 knot winds), watching not just the adult pro's do this but the junior pro's (as young as 11 years of age) crash and it didn't phase them. Ok the might have had a moment of frustration, but they got back up sailed away and tried it again! It hit me, today we measure success by positive accomplishments (papers published, number of followers, likes, retweets and commendations). As such when I get told that something needs re-writing, a manuscript is rejected, or an application doesn't get through first time I see myself as a failure. I think this is especially true amount PhD students where so much is on our shoulders.
Failure is an even more common experience the world of research as it is highly competitive. Further creating and confirming knowledge (the whole purpose of research) is a very difficult task. It is the windsurfing equivalent of the RedBull storm chase. PhD's and early career researchers have to learn how to survive and thrive in a harsh environment. To enable us to do this our supervisors, mentors, and peers need to be critical as they take us through multiple learning stages to shape and develop us ready to rip when the wind and surf is up! I'm not justify them to be cruel to students, but merely stating if they don't challenge us then we are never going to be ready for that first rejection notice from a funding application, conference submission, or peer reviewed journal submission. Learning to 'fail' and handle 'rejection' is a part of the skills they are shaping in us. Teaching us how to get up and carry on.
I feel lucky as by working on my windsurfing skills at the same time as my PhD combined with the skills of my amazing supervisors; I have started to see my failures in a different light. I'm not seeing them as failures, but merely as another step in my journey to get as close to 'not wrong' as possible. When I read the comments of both reviewer 1 and reviewer 2, I actually saw that they were saying; 'this is interesting but it would be better if'. Rather than only hearing 'your stupid, this is wrong, you'll never make it' (my previous inner voice to rejection). I feel like this is a major step in my PhD journey as I'm starting to see myself in a bigger context, I am just beginning in this challenging environment, even if I was a genius new researcher (which I'm not) I would still have to learn to adjust my techniques and advance my skills to contribute to the growing the knowledge in health as any contribution should be challenged and tested before being accepted. So I am choosing to view 'failure' as a way to adapt my work to shape it into a better version!
I hope that this inspires you to start re-framing your 'failures' too!
