The Human Side of Failure

When I was younger, I used to be a straight A student. I graduated valedictorian in high school, with an average grade of 18/20. Later on, I started studying full-time at University while working 36 hours a week.

I would wake up at around 5:30 am, grab a quick breakfast if I had the time, get the lunch my mother would have already prepared for me, and get to school at 8 am. I would ask for permission to my linguistics professor to leave one hour earlier from our seminars, because I had to be at work at 3 pm. Then I took phone calls as help-desk in a call center until 9 at night. I woulld get home at around 10 pm, and spend around 3 more hours writing essays and reading articles for school. Saturdays were the lighter days of the week, having to "only" work for 6 hours. 

All of this while keeping an average grade of 17/20 at school. Of which, I must admit, I was very proud. I was never one of those students that would spend hours studying, though: I simply didn't have the time. I just remember genuinely loving what I did, and what I studied. In retrospective, this is a habit I wish I hadn't lost.

I was the kind of person that thought other people should be able to do the same. If I worked, and studied at the same time for so many hours, and still managed to accomplish so much, why couldn't other people? Why didn't others accomplish the same things I did? It only took some effort!

Life would prove me wrong. Oh, so wrong.  

Once I moved to Europe the pressure to perform was so big I started worrying a lot more about the outcome and focus less on the journey (I had come here to study, if I failed at that, what was I doing here at all?). I became so afraid to fail, that fear took over me. 

And the thing about fear is that it paralyzing. It throws you into a pithole out of which it is very hard to crawl. 

While it may seem my "success" (I have a very different definition for that word nowadays) was due to a huge amount of work, that is debatable:

Ever since I can remember, I've had a very good memory, which always helped in school. In high school, my friends always accused me of lying to them when I told them I hadn't studied for an exam and still got good grades. I really hadn't. I just had the capacity of remembering exactly what the teacher had said in class, weeks afterwards, even without having to open a book. Some people have good memory, I happened to be one of them. You can't really take pride in something you are born with. 

So, when I started working and studying at university at the same time, it seemed like a titanic workload. But, was it really? 

Sure, the political situation in Venezuela wasn't ideal: tear-gas on the way to university due to protests, crime taking over the streets to the point where going out of your house meant risking your life every day, a very hard economical situation, etc. Still. I had a loving family. I had no real responsibilities pulling me back. I had a back up, people who would step up for me If I failed. There was a roof on my head. I was healthy, both physically and mentally. 

One of the many protests you would encounter on your way to school back in my country

If I had a hard day at work or at school, there was a home waiting for me, people I could talk to, people who loved me. The friends I grew up with weren't miles away from me as they are now. I could have coffee with them whenever I missed them. I had my pets, which have always been a big deal to me.

I was in a country where everyone spoke my language. When I worked, I didn't have to fear my language was not going to be good enough and that they would fire me for that. All of these are things so many people take for granted, as I did back then. 

I had all the conditions to succeed back then. How would I not?

When I moved to Europe, leaving my family behind in South America, my conditions changed drastically: The problems back in my country got even bigger. I was constantly worried about my family back at home. Solitude took its toll on my mind. To top it all off, three days before I started University in Ghent, I fell off my bike and hit my head pretty badly on the sidewalk. I had a brain concussion and I dealt with headaches that wouldn't allow me to study for the rest of the year.

Add to that the fact that when you move into a new country, and your knowledge of the language isnt very good, your self-esteem is prone to suffer too. You don't feel as a very useful member of society anymore. The things you could have excelled at back in your country, you can't anymore until you fully adapt. And that process takes some years. 

Maybe stronger minds would have dealt with all of this without breaking. But my mind got tired of trying so hard for so many years and I developed clinical depression. I simply couldn't do the things I used to do before, no matter how much I tried. My body and mind plotted together so I would be forced to slow down. And after a long time of fighting it, that's exactly what I did.

I began to fail subjects I had been great at my whole life. My will diminished in a way I lacked all the motivation that used to drive me in the past. I became acquainted with something I had never encountered before: Failure. 

And the most terrifying part of failure is being blamed for it once you have done your best. Some people would tell me my problem was an attitude problem, instead of a health issue. Only I knew what I was going through, but the problem with mental illness is that many people fail to treat them for what they are: health issues. 

I encountered people who were "trying to help" by telling me to just get over it and get working. I understand they were coming from a good place, but that's not really how depression works. Or how failure works, for that matter. We put so much emphasis on success nowadays that we forget everyone comes from a different starting point and cannot be expected to achieve the same results. 

In a career like International Business Management you may find yourself in a similar situation as the one I lived: you will be far away from your home, your country, the people you love. And I just wanted to let you know that it is ok if at some point you feel you simply can't do what used to be your best.

 It is ok if sometimes in life you feel everyone else is going faster than you, and you feel stuck. Life is not a race. As long as you do your very best with the resources available, you'll get there.

 Maybe when you are far away you will turn into a completely different person than the one you used to be. You will face many problems on your own. Sometimes you will feel tired, lonely and hopeless. But if at that point, you go out and do your best in the morning, you are still winning. Don't ever let anyone tell you you aren't "doing enough".

Through IBM you will also encounter people from many different backgrounds, coming from all kinds of situations in life that you could never imagine going through. Don't judge them based on results. I used to do that. Life has taught me to value people based on what they do despite their conditions, because that's where you can find their true value and how much they can contribute to your life, your company, you name it. 

In his TED-talk "A kinder, gentler philosophy of success", Alain de Botton talks about how our society defines what we are based on what we do and discusses whether failure is truly earned or not. He defines snobbery: "A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to form a complete vision of who you are". 

It is easy to tell people who have problems (personal, mental, economical ones) that they should just stop complaining and do their best. The problem is that when you do that, you are assuming they are not. And if you truly want to succeed in an intercultural-oriented career, becoming aware of others' limitations is vital. Empathy is key to deal with people. 

After all, a manager's most important resource is his employees. Who all happen to be human. (At least for now...)