Recently, I have learned something instructive from others’ failures: we can fail even if we are confident in our ideas. Let’s introduce them.
Learning from others’ failures
Not only others’ successes but also failures sometimes help us to prevent similar outcomes. We sometimes discover opportunities in similar areas.
Although our circumstances may be different from theirs, the reasons for ideas can be the same. Others may have the same goals as we do.
In that case, others’ failures often provide us with valuable lessons. Sometimes, we can realize that our good ideas don’t actually work. That prevents our critical failures.
That told me the necessity of verifying it, even if we are confident. In other words, we need to calm ourselves and eliminate excitement when acting rationally. Today, I will introduce two cases of others’ failures that impressed me. This perspective may help you prevent mistakes caused by excitement.
Excellent ideas vs. excitement
Verify your good ideas, even if you are confident, especially when attempting something for society.
The idea doesn’t excite us; the goal does. Distinguishing them prevents us from critical failures.
Ideas are logical, which doesn’t affect emotions. We don’t feel excited when making rational choices. On the other hand, excitement is an emotion that empathy creates. The vision of success excites us. In other words, excitement doesn’t prove the idea’s correctness.
Although a good idea should be put into action immediately, don’t make a big gamble suddenly. The better the idea, the more calmly we should verify it and steadily develop it.
Rationality often shows us that every idea has a period of testing. We don’t have to rush in many cases.
My brother’s failed decision
Let’s introduce two examples of failures I learned recently.
The first example is my brother’s decision. I went to my brother’s pastry shop last weekend as well and helped him. Since it was Valentine’s Day, I decorated many pieces of a chocolate cake.
Rationally speaking, it seemed to me that my brother’s intentions and effectiveness were correct. Although the chocolate cake I decorated was surprisingly expensive, I thought it would sell. From the experiences of Christmas and afterward, many cakes had been sold. Since Valentine’s Day was one of the special events, I felt it would probably sell even if it was a bit expensive.
However, contrary to my anticipation, that cake sold only a bit. I don’t know why. On the other hand, my brother made a large amount of the cake on that day, February 14th. Many pieces remained unsold. That should have made a large loss.
It seemed to be a special cake that had been hurriedly prepared just before Valentine’s Day. It means that he didn’t confirm whether it would sell in advance. He was confident in his logic, so he prepared a lot. However, logic can often be mistaken, especially when attempting something for society.
The political party’s failed decision
The second example is political party formation. In my region, several political parties united to form a powerful force just before the election.
Their idea was strategic for me. They brought a new concept that made the opposing forces look like extreme factions, and that made their forces look capable to the majority of people. I estimated they would win big historically.
The leaders of those parties should also feel excited about their new concept. That made them suddenly merge into one political party. Since there was little time until the election, they decided on their own without testing their ideas with their party members and supporters.
Contrary to those leaders’ expectations and my prediction, the result was their historical loss. I still don’t know why. Neither the party leaders nor the members probably know why exactly.
One thing we can say is that logic can often be mistaken, especially when attempting something for society.
Even if we came up with an excellent idea, that doesn’t mean verification is unnecessary. The level of excitement has nothing to do with the logical correctness.
Conclusion
That is why we need to verify our ideas, even if we are confident.
In other words, we need to calm ourselves and eliminate excitement when we judge things based on ideas.
This perspective may help you prevent mistakes caused by excitement.
Thank you for reading this article. I hope to see you in the next one.
