Is failure avoidance a good thing?

[msc545]

I occasionally see people on here advising someone who has failed repeatedly at something ro "try and keep trying" which I think is often very bad advice.

People who experience repeated failures experience repeated disappointments, and often have depression and poor self-esteem as a result.

Why put yourself through this?

[exitseven]

I have seen it both ways. I wanted to graduate from college. I had to drop out twice mostly for financial reasons. I finally graduated but it took me almost 14 years to get it done. I really felt proud of myself for sticking it out and it gave me the confidence to go to grad school and get a Masters degree as well.

When I ran marathons my goal was to break 3 hours. I was really too big for the sport but I trained really hard logging 50+ miles/ week. My PB wss 3:03 and I was planning on running the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington DC, I trained too hard apparently and had a bad case of tendonitis and could not run it. I only ran one more after that and did a very slow 3:18 and never really could get a good training base again. It was very frustrating. I saw an orthopedic surgeon to see if there was a surgical fix and ha said that he could clean out the scar tissue but I would just tear it up again running another marathon.

[msc545]

Your school failures wee financial, not intellectual. Had they been intellecual I think you might have responded differently.

CONGRATULATIONS (belatedly I guess) on graduating and on your Master's degree!!

[exitseven]

I struggled academically getting mostly Cs the whole time. I never really felt like I belonged there because all the other kids seemed much smarter than me. I refused to give up. I realize that I brute forced my way through the whole thing and it took me a lot longer than it should have but at least I made it.

[msc545]

A C is still a passing grade and a respectable one.

[exitseven]

Yes, it is passing but a Cminus is not. When I was in grad school the program I was in only let you get one C before they kicked you out. The first semester I took a course called Discrete Mathematics. It was taught by the chairman of the math dept. It was a tough course and the exams were of outrageous proportions. You brought 6 sharpened pencils with you because you would fill up two or three bluebooks. You literally wrote for the whole 3 hours. Nobody finished and the prof would come around and snatch the pencil out of your hand and tell you that you were done. After the final I went to rhe bathroom before I went home. There was a grown man in there in tears because he thought he bombed it. I ended up with a C for the class and literally spent the rest of the course just one exam away from getting kicked out

[msc545]

I know that feeling. I had to take an Art history course where they showed you slides of paintings that you had to memorize. My visual memory is not all that good and I got a C apparently by the grace of God. Scared the hell out of me.

[artgorgeous]

When they say - keep trying they imply trying to reach the goal. They are not saying - trying do the same thing to reach the goal. Try doing differently in pursue of your goal.

[msc545]

I assume, perhaps wrongly, that people who have the welfare of their recipient in mind would make suggestions along the lines of what you suggest. They generally do not.

[BoopBoopBeep]

I think the difference is "are you getting closer?" I've been on long races where people tap out at mile 18 or whatever. Just hit the wall and can't go further. I think that doesn't mean they have to give up the activity, they just keep training. Maybe the weather that day played a part. Their diet didn't have enough sustainment carbs. Bad footwear. A rough course. I could probably think of a few others. If they make 19.5 next time that's an improvement. If they never make it over 18, I'd say the problem is that then never leaned WHY they failed more than merely the failing aspect of it. 20 seems to be a big wall (big in that's where a lot of people drop off and you either push through or hate life). I hit a wall at 20 every time whether it's a 21-mile or a 30-mile (longest race I've signed up for). At that point I have to take in more calories/carbs/fructose because whatever I ate over the past 24 hours is out of my system and I have to use sustainment resources. As someone who's chronically had low blood sugar (despite the metric crap ton of berries I eat), I've had to experiment with what I bring to snack on and how much I bring. I remember my first 5k with weights after my heart attack and thinking how much that sucked. It sucked a LOT. I felt twice like I was going to pass out. We finally made a change (and reduction) in medicine that helped a lot.

There was an obstacle course I did once. It was a lateral transversal on top of a rope where you had to engage 10 targets with sidearm. Actually it may have just been 8. It's been a while. For anybody that's shot upside down (supine works too because of the sight picture) it's remarkably harder. You'd think "line up on the head" would still be "line up on the head" but your brain just starts thinking weirdly when the sight picture is inverted and it's slower to aim. Even though I was still rightside up, it's similar in concept because its weird to look down like that and have to try to balance while you shoot so you don't fall off the rope. Anyway, there's an angle to the rope, so you're sliding down across the top of it, so obviously you're closer to the ground (and the target) the further along you get. I missed the last target 3 or 4 times in a row, which, since I hate heights was less than ideal because I had to go back and do it again. I could have tapped out whenever I wanted, but that wasn't the road I wanted to go down. I think there would have been infinitely more self-esteem and depression issues if I'd sought to avoid failure and didn't get back up on the rope. Hell first couple times I even got on the rope I fell off before getting my sidearm out because how often in life do you slide down across the top of a rope anyway.

Now if after 20 years of piano lessons you can barely bang out "chopsticks" then maybe time to explore better uses of time and money, sure, so I accept there's an extreme at both ends of that spectrum.

[msc545]

In your examples, in both cases, you saw a road to success and took it which is great! In my example, there is no clear road to success that I (or my bass teacher) can see; I am used to playing 6-string which means the strings are closer together and the fret distances are very different, not to mention that the fretboard length on the bass is a lot longer.

Add all that up and it's an instrument I cannot reliably get my fingers on accurately short of looking at it, and I do not want to get into that bad habit. My teacher suggested that if I really wanted to play it I would need to give up 6-string and that I am not going to do. That too is just unacceptable.

So I see no clear path to success without acquiring a bad habit or giving up something I really love.

[msc545]

oh.. sorry. I am clearly not "getting closer". Before I stopped it was actually getting worse.

[BoopBoopBeep]

That's fascinating I didn't realize there were structural differences like that. That actually makes sense to walk away from since learning one would be destroying good habits on the other.

[msc545]

Essentially, yes. I didn't realize this either until recently. I guess this is why people that play guitar don't usually play bass and vice versa...

[BoopBoopBeep]

Haha, I bet the guitar/bass stores aren't too quick to point that out and lose a potential customer either

[msc545]

Well - to be fair - I could have asked, and I should have.

[BoopBoopBeep]

I don't know that that is something I would know to ask, having only had experience with non-fret strings

[msc545]

It never actually occurred to me that it would be a problem, until it was...

[BoopBoopBeep]

Haha that describes many of my prior relationships...

[msc545]

Mine too!

[RealMarek]

I once had a position where my boss refused to give me an assistant with knowledge in an area that I lacked. I didn’t realize how critical that particular discipline would turn out to be. Much later, I was invited to interview for a position that required the skills I have plus that same one where I am lacking. I said I’m not the right person for that job unless I could have an assistant who could cover that area of expertise. A lot of people exaggerate their qualifications. Sometimes it works out for them, sometimes it doesn’t.

[AlexEfron]

I once got a great piece of advice - people say practice makes perfect. Practice makes habits. You practice wrong, it'll become your habit. Sometimes you need someone to tell you where you're going wrong so you can improve yourself and practice right.

It stuck with me. If you keep trying and keep failing then I guess it's time to acknowledge that something is going wrong and you need someone to help you out.

[LaFemmeFatale_1]

I think it’s a bad thing.

I myself always keep trying. I am not a quitter.

If you get hurt, so what?

Have a respect to yourself, that you tried anyways.

The key is don’t have high expectations, try for the pleasure of it, and enjoy the process of it and regardless of whether you win or not, in the end, you can tell, you loved every bit of it and you enjoyed it a lot. 💖

[inhua]

depends on what the failures are because there can be life and death situations involved in some failures e. g. confronting an intruder with a gun while unarmed

[On_cloud_wine]

There are no shortcuts.. Excellence is made in a slow cooker.. not a microwave.. I say keep trying

[KrakenAttackin]

Absolutely, positively, correct. Consistent failure will destroy ones soul. People who constantly say "failure is good", have never experienced any real adversity.

[Huntingnfishin]

Can't go wrong if ya didn't try! Just don't get mad when life passes ya by

[lightbulb27]

When you are fragile… yes.

[msc545]

It is also to avoid becoming fragile through depression and PTSD symptoms in general.

[lightbulb27]

Yes more failure than can handle be bad. Its just stress… it kill ya or make ya stronger

[msc545]

Stress doesn't make anyone stronger.

[lightbulb27]

isn't that what working out is to physical body?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGyVTAoXEU&t=3s

[msc545]

You may have noticed a difference between a stressed damaged muscle and a stressed damaged brain, yes?

[Drewtate]

Who dares wins