The pressure to succeed is bad. But now we have to fail right, too | Alex Holder

High flyers talking about past disasters just piles the pressure on the rest of us for whom failure may be exactly that

I once worked at an advertising agency that had a huge mural in its reception that declared “Fail Harder”. I’d walk past those words on the way to my desk in the basement and wonder what they meant exactly. Judging by the constant stream of awards the agency was winning, it wasn’t failing as a business and I knew, as a very middling member of staff, that if I failed I’d most likely be fired.

Right now we can’t move for people boasting about what failures they were before becoming totally successful. The popular podcast How to Fail with Elizabeth Day “celebrates the things that haven’t gone right”, except it only celebrates those things with exceptionally high achievers: Booker prize-nominated author David Nicholls is a failed actor; Dolly Alderton failed to get into Bristol University – now she’s published a bestselling book; Bafta-winning writer and actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge once failed a Downton Abbey audition.

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from US news | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Lt3pmE