The road to suc­cess runs right through fail­ure. It’s an idea that’s get­ting a lot of atten­tion late­ly. Ear­li­er this month, the Berghs School of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in Stock­holm orga­nized an exhi­bi­tion around the whole premise that “suc­cess nev­er hap­pens with­out tak­ing risks. And risks are what you’re capa­ble of tak­ing when you over­come the fear of fail­ing.” But how to do that? How to take that leap? The exhi­bi­tion put that ques­tion to artists and thinkers who know suc­cess in a very inti­mate way. (See full list on Brain­Pick­ings here.) That includes Paulo Coel­ho, the author of The Alchemist, a book that has sold 65 mil­lion copies across 150 coun­tries, and he had this to say:

I’m nev­er par­a­lyzed by my fear of fail­ure… I say “Ok, I’m doing my best… ” And, from the moment that I can say that I’m doing my best … I sit down, I breathe, and I say “I put all of my love into it, I did it with all my heart.” … And whether they like [the book] or not is irrel­e­vant, because I like it. I’m com­mit­ted to the thing that I did. And so far nobody has crit­i­cized or refused it. When you put love and enthu­si­asm into your work, even if peo­ple don’t see it, they know it’s there, that you did this with all of your body and soul, so that is what I encour­age you to do.

It’s a good thought, which gets pur­sued on a par­al­lel track by Tim Har­ford. In 2005, Har­ford wrote the best­selling book, The Under­cov­er Econ­o­mist, and now he returns with Adapt: Why Suc­cess Always Starts with Fail­ure. Speak­ing yes­ter­day on KQED in San Fran­cis­co, the writer, some­times likened to Mal­colm Glad­well, talked about the impor­tance of exper­i­men­ta­tion, tak­ing cal­cu­lat­ed risks, and cre­at­ing room for fail­ure, some­thing that mat­ters as much to indi­vid­u­als as it does to cor­po­ra­tions or nations try­ing to solve dif­fi­cult prob­lems. You can lis­ten to the full inter­view here.

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