You Are Not Incompetent

When you try and fail you can get down on yourself. When you try and fail many times, you might think you are incompetent. This is further from the truth than you can imagine. Every time you fail you are one step closer to success. I have failed many times and I have started to get back up and try again. I can remember a time when I was working for the Air Force, when I had a great research idea. I thought I had finally come up with an original idea. I wrote up a proposal and showed it to my boss. He said it looks good but I need to get the advice of the division’s CTC lead before going up to the Chief Scientist to ask for money to do the work. They had scheduled me in with some of my colleagues in my branch so each of us could present our ideas to the CTC lead. My colleagues went first. I was shocked to find out that they were presenting the same idea as me but only bigger and better. I didn’t know what to do, I had prepared slides for my presentation and had to give it anyways. So I gave my presentation and sure enough was asked what the difference was between my idea and the one before me. I had to admit that nothing was different except that their proposal was better. I was embarrassed to say the least. The lesson I learned from it was don’t keep your ideas a secret and worry about someone else taking credit. Don’t work in a vacuum and think that you know it all. As Richard Hamming had explained in his talk You and Your Research, I needed to keep the door to my office open so that I could hear the ideas of my colleagues. I also learned that more people can think of a better idea than just one. They had several people working on their team and they out performed me in their proposal. I wasn’t able to compete. So I was humbled and realized that I should seek help whenever possible. I shouldn’t let my ego get in the way. Over the years I had many rejections for proposals and conference papers for one reason or another. But sometimes I didn’t and I felt great. I didn’t think I was incompetent for failing so many times. I just kept trying. All successful people have many failures in their life before they succeed. The key was that they kept learning and never gave up. Whenever you are faced with a series of failures don’t let that stop you. Learn from those failures and apply those lessons to the next idea you have.