Mark Ford on failureIn order to address the subject of fear and life changes (relevant to every subscriber of this newsletter), I want to expose you to author, entrepreneur and consultant Mark Ford, via a reprint of his Palm Beach Research Group article on this subject from September 9, 2015.


I used to dread the thought of public speaking. And when I was forced to make a speech, I did a terrible job, which only made me dread the next speech even more. It was a vicious cycle.

When I became the editorial director of a newsletter business in South Florida in 1982, I found myself in an uncomfortable position… I had to conduct meetings and give presentations at industry functions on a fairly regular basis; something I was ill-prepared to do.

So, I decided to enroll in a Dale Carnegie program for public speaking. Somehow, I registered for the wrong course. Instead of focusing on speech-making, it had a broader goal. And that program changed my life. It taught me the importance of setting goals and taking action. But it also taught me to be more comfortable as a speaker. My speech-making skills improved almost accidentally.

Every week, we had to read a chapter of Carnegie’s classic book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and then make a two-minute in-class presentation about how we were going to put the principle of that chapter to work in our lives.

On Thursday evenings after work, I would drive a half-hour to the meeting place. During that drive, I thought about what I was going to say. It was difficult in the beginning, but it got a little easier each week. By the end of the 14-week course, I was performing at a near-professional level. I had won several awards in competitions and was routinely rated at the top of the class.

The final session was a sort of commencement ceremony. Relatives and friends were allowed to attend, which tripled the size of the audience we had to speak to. I gave the last speech. I was still a little nervous when I got up to the podium, but I’d learned a lot by then. So, I took a deep breath and did my thing. I got a strong round of applause. Several people I didn’t even know came up to congratulate me… and one suggested I should become a comedian.

I wasn’t foolish enough to take his advice to heart, but it did make me happy to think I had made so much progress in so little time, starting from practically zero. How did I conquer my fear of public speaking? The same way you would conquer the fear of anything else.

Humiliation and Humility

A big part of what we are afraid of is embarrassment, being shamed in front of other people. When embarrassment is extreme, we call it humiliation. If you pass gas at a fancy dinner party, you feel embarrassed. If your big project at work fails miserably, and you’ve been bragging it would be a “sure thing”, you feel humiliated.

Humiliation is what happens to embarrassment when it’s mixed with pride. The prouder you are, the more failure hurts, which brings us to our cure for the fear of failure: humility. I’m guilty of priding myself. I’m proud of my writing, for example, and the success I’ve had in business. So, I have to keep reminding myself to be humble about those things.

But I’m not proud of everything I do. I take no pride in my ability to dance, sing, or speak foreign languages because I do those things so badly. And because my ego isn’t involved, I’m not embarrassed to ask stupid questions, to show myself as a beginner, and, ultimately, to fail again and again as I attempt to master those skills. The truth is, when I started out in business, I wasn’t very good at that, either. Again, that made it possible for me to ask lots of questions, look stupid, and make mistakes… which accelerated my learning curve.

Failure can be Key To SuccessThat last observation brings us to an important principle of success. I call it “the secret of accelerated failure.” It’s a principle I developed in the early 1990s.

The principle of accelerated failure is this: To develop any complex skill, you must be willing to make mistakes and endure failures. The faster you can make those mistakes and suffer those failures, the quicker you will master the skill.

At the Palm Beach Research Group, we teach this secret to our managers. We encourage them to allow their employees to fail. Not to fail stupidly. Not to make the same mistakes over and over again. But to feel free to fail at something, so long as it was done in the pursuit of knowledge. If you play golf or practice Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you know this to be true: If you tense up and focus on avoiding mistakes, you will learn very slowly. If you relax, let the mistakes happen, and learn from them, you will advance quickly.

It starts with being humble; humble enough to accept the fact that when you begin anything new, you’re likely to do it poorly.


The conclusion of Mr. Ford’s article (Part II) will appear in next week’s Selling Point.

©2015 Robinson Training Solutions, LLC