I had an awakening after the Great Recession took place in 2008-09.
I was trying to find a job during that time and afterwards to try to get myself into the salaried position after receiving my Bachelor’s Degree.
I had trouble finding a full time job because of the dreaded, “I did not have experience for the job because my degree was in Spanish.”
I did all that I could to gain experience in public relations/marketing, journalism, radio and television during the time I was at a day job.
At that same time, I was freelancing for a daily newspaper.
Did I mentioned that all of that took place in a “small town/city” Huntsville, Texas.
I had accomplished a whole lot during my time in the “small city” and moved to the area of the fourth largest city in the United States, Houston, Texas at the end of July to live with a family member.
I had hoped that the move was going to allow me to gain a much better shot at gaining more opportunities for freelancing and hopefully land a “full time” job.
Well I was wrong.
I had been struggling to gain a full time job despite going to a lot of networking events, which was the best advantage of living in the Houston area, engaging with a lot of friends on social media, particularly Twitter and sharing other people’s content that will make my friends lives better.
Finally, I had some leads and was able to gain a chance to work for a company in the Houston area.
I was set to go to take a test and had arrived about 8 minutes so that I would not be late.
However, I made one of the biggest screw-ups of my life: I had forgotten one document that would have allowed me to take the test.
And since I was close to the time to take the test, I could not drive to get it because the testing center was about a 30 minute drive.
So in the process, I ended up failing and missed my chance to possibly work for a company.
I have felt so low that I was wondering if many people were right about me being the all-time screwup.
They have not told me so, but I can imagine that they probably think that.
I have thought carefully about whether to share this with y’all because I don’t want to give a wrong impression to anyone especially employers.
Then I realized that we all make mistakes and it is a part of learning what works and what does not work.
Sometimes when a person/s are thinking about doing work that they love, they will be paralyzed with fear of failure.
They think that when they fail, it is the end of the world and think that they can’t recover from that failure.
And when they see someone else who are successful, they feel even worse because they think that everything is going well for them.
What they failed to realize is that many people experience failure along the way to success.
And who can blame them for thinking that many people do not fail.
We have been conditioned as a society to see everyone as a success thanks to the media outlets
They only showcase startups or the super stars that is made up of multi-millionaires and billionaires who have been acquired by the bigger firms.
The people in media outlets understands that showcasing the successes will probably boost their ratings and draw more people to watch their shows.
They also draw the person as being superhuman because of their success and that brings into the minds of either would be entrepreneurs or other employees who want to achieve the highest possible success.
What they don’t do is document the trials and tribulations of the same people who have achieved success because my guess is that it is bad for business.
What if instead of just focusing on the success of these people, we focus on the failures as well.
I can guarantee that a lot of people will be able to relate with the them and understand that they are not alone in their entrepreneurial journey.
It will also give people the courage to show everyone who looks up to them that they fail everyday and that they did not allow that failure to define who they are.
Some media outlets are starting to showcase people’s failures in addition to success.
An example of one media outlet who has showcased the failure of famous entrepreneurs is Fast Company in this article, “Five Famous Entrepreneurs Who Learned From Their First Spectacular Failures.
In conclusion, it is o.k. to showcase your failures in addition to your success because
1. It shows that you are human
2. You are demonstrating strong leadership
If you are not still convinced that you should showcase your failures in addition to your success, check out this article by Nancy Duarte on LinkedIn.
