The Upside of A Down Economy: Turning Failure into Success

August 13, 2009

rosie Very few of us in today’s workplace are veterans of the Great Depression. But if current economic conditions are any indication, the economy that we are living through makes us all veterans of the “Great Recession.”

While the last several weeks have brought an improvement in future long term economic forecasting, it is clear that as of August 2009, the job market is going to continue to shed jobs, albeit at a slower rate, at least through the last quarter of this year.

For many individuals, and in certain cases whole communities, the recession has brought a sense of siege. More than 4.5 million workers have been laid off since the recession began. On a single day last January, an incredible 70,000 people were laid off, and another 50,000 or 60,000 lost their jobs on each of the 10 days that followed.

That’s scary stuff and you can always mitigate your concerns with the fact that, for example, as today’s unemployment rate nears 10 percent, the Great Depression had unemployment rising to a now unimaginable 25 percent, but that is small comfort to those currently out of work, who have spent the last several months looking for work without success.

Loss of employment income, the loss of a home, the substantial diminishment of retirement savings, and every other negative repercussion of this recession are all things that push us to consider that great unspoken fear we nearly all carry inside: fear of failure.

And while we might be weathering this storm, we look at a relative, neighbor, or friend and we wonder about the strength of our own financial world.

At times like these we take particular solace in the amazing stories of people like Harry Potter author, J. K. Rowling, who looked into the abyss of financial ruin and emerged as one of the world’s most successful individuals.

As Rowling tells it, she is the veteran of a perfect storm of failure–broken marriage, disapproval from her parents, and poverty that bordered on homelessness. All of this sent her back to her first dream of writing because she quite simply had nothing else left to lose. “Failure stripped away everything inessential,” she explained. “It taught me things about myself I could have learned no other way.”

Of course, stories of human resilience abound. Apple founder Steve Jobs rose above dropping out of college, being fired from the company he founded, and, most recently, being diagnosed with an often-lethal form of cancer. Each one of these life changing challenges forced Jobs to adopt a new view of his future. He redefined his future and kept moving forward.

Sports superstar Michael Jordan proudly explains, “I have failed over and over and over again, and that is why I succeed.” Our culture and history are filled with such stories, from Oprah, to Walt Disney, to Winston Churchill, and Thomas Edison. All very different lives, but with one recurring and strikingly similar theme: taking failure and reforming it into success.

The simple truth is that failure is an important key in building strong character. Failure, as pointed out in a recent article in Psychology Today, “stirs some of the most potent social emotions we have: humiliation, guilt, shame.”

Many of us have or had parents and grandparents who were eyewitness to the double calamities of the Great Depression and World War II. Almost to a person each one of them showed a resilience of character largely missing in today’s culture. For millions of that generation, their early lives were a testing ground for turning failure into success.

This economy is indeed a scary time and for many a life-changing time as well. Still we have a chance to emerge stronger, and wiser from all this, and that, without doubt, is the upside of a down economy.

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