Friday, July 8, 2016

The Failure Pornography


"The only thing that my friend boyfriend was successful, was at failing."

Ernesto Rivera

You read the blogs, you read Linkedin, you read the books, all of them talks about the importance of failing and how you should learn from the situation, improve and go on. So this should be the way? I don't think so, I believe that the message is incomplete.

Let me tell you a story, I used to work in a corporation as an electronic engineer. I don't know why, but since day one, I always felt out of place, I didn't like the job, I didn't like the corporate culture, I didn't like my coworkers. So as you can imagine, I was not the best performing employee of the corporation, I felt miserable, and I can openly say I was a failure at that job.

Normal literature would say that if I failed, I should learn the lesson, take an action plan, improve and become good at was I was doing. But the thing is, I didn't like the job, so why I should become good at something that I hate? There is no point in doing that. I knew that my failure was not because of lack of skill, but because I hated was I was doing, so I determined that I shouldn't focus in something that I hated, I should focus on becoming good in something that I liked.

I knew that I liked and I was good at teaching, so I quit. It took some time to become a university professor, but I made it. The result was I am one of the highest performing professors of the faculty, according to the students. Failure porn tells you to fail and try again and again until you become good at something. I tell you: fail, and identify in which areas you are good at and focus only on those areas. Fuck your current job if you suck at it, I can tell you that there are other good opportunities by trying to become good in something that you suck at.

I hope you got the message.

Bye.