Failure Is an Option: What I Took From Elizabeth Day (and Living on Purpose)
Two events in one day this week, one theme. At the Big Brew a local creative networking event, a panel debated whether "authenticity" has become so overused it's lost its meaning. In the evening, at Leeds International Festival of Ideas, I watched Elizabeth Day, host of the How To Fail podcast, in conversation with the psychologist Jamil Qureshi in the Quarry Theatre at Leeds Playhouse. It has been a bumper month in Leeds for hearing inspiring and courageous women!
The panel's worry about the word is fair. But the thing underneath it, living and working on purpose, was exactly what both evenings were really about. Here's what stayed with me.
Living on purpose is a daily practice. The outcome is what you get.
Day made a distinction I've been turning over ever since. Living on purpose is something you do every day. The outcome is something you receive. If you measure yourself only by the outcome (such as a 5 year plan), you'll probably have changed by the time you reach it, so it won't be the outcome you wanted any more.
That's close to how I coach and how I live. Aim at the daily action, not just the finish line, and trust that the finish line will move with you.
The same person on stage and at home
Day was candid that she's the same person on stage, in a podcast interview, and at home stroking her cat. Living as yourself is simply more relaxing. She was clear, too, that vulnerability doesn't mean sobbing at your desk every day, and it doesn't mean sharing everything. It's easier when you're not pretending, that's all.
I'm trying to hold myself to that standard online, too.
Failure is data
Day described a lesson from an early podcast guest, Deborah Frances-White of The Guilty Feminist, who taught improvisation: when a joke fails to land, that isn't a verdict, it's information. If you take the data and change what you do next, you get better. Failure as data acquisition removes some of the sting, not all of it, but some.
She also drew a line between two kinds of failure. Everyday failure, such as a missed promotion or a lost job, can usually be learned from. Cataclysmic failure, such as illness, loss or systemic injustice, is beyond anyone's control and has no neat meaning attached to it. It would be wrong to claim otherwise. But living alongside it can still teach you something over time.
Whose plan was it?
Her definition of failure is worth noting: failure is when life doesn't go to plan. And if life doesn't go to plan, the interesting question is where the plan came from. Day questioned her own, realising she'd inherited ideas about romance, marriage and success from her upbringing and the films she watched, long before she'd asked what she herself wanted.
This is the heart of my own work. Many of the women I coach built a great life that no longer fits, and the start of redesigning it is asking whose plan it was in the first place.
Process over outcome, learning over verdicts
Jamil Qureshi added a interesting point about decisions: in an unpredictable world you can make a good decision and get a bad outcome, or a bad decision and get lucky. So judge the quality of your process, not just the result. Blame looks backwards, he said; responsibility looks forwards.
He also described a professional golfer he'd worked with who stopped taking mistakes personally by asking himself just two questions at the end of every day: what did I learn today, and what did I enjoy today? Detaching the action from the person, he argued, is how you make mistakes useful.
And a final distinction I'll be borrowing: personality persuades, character influences. In times of change, people choose to follow character, and character shows most clearly in how we handle failure.
Imperfection is the point
Day made the case that imperfection is the one thing we have over AI, and that our flaws are where our uniqueness lives. After a week of arguing with myself about imperfect photos and unpolished posts, I couldn't agree more.
A few things to try
Take what's useful and make it your own:
End your day with two questions. What did I learn today? What did I enjoy today? Nothing else, no scorecard.
Ask whose plan it is. Pick one area where life isn't going to plan. Where did that plan come from? Is it still yours?
Separate the action from the person. "That didn't work" is information. "I'm a failure" is a story.
Change one thought rather than fighting it. Day suggested thanking your brain for the warning, then asking it for a more constructive second thought.
Choose one daily action that expresses your purpose. Not the outcome. The action you can repeat tomorrow.
If you'd like a gentle structure for noticing what's actually going on and choosing a next step, The Small Redesign is a free workbook built for exactly that.
And if you're ready to question the plan itself and redesign what comes next, I'd love to talk it through with you.
