“Ignore Failure at Your Own Peril” is the topic of this week’s #kaizenblog chat, hosted by Valeria Maltoni (@conversationage) and Elli St. George – Godfrey (@3keyscoach), which I’ll be joining as a guest host. Friday July 23, 12 PM Eastern, follow the hashtag #kaizenblog, and join the conversation.

We form ourselves more by the routes we take than the destinations we reach.

Failure.

Failure is a rich word, a simple word with a rich vein of thought, opinions, lessons and advice behind it. Every single day, we hear stories about failure, advice about how to deal with it and lessons of how people and organizations have recovered from it. And sometimes, we experience it ourselves.

When you experience failure, what do you do with it? Ignore it? Own up to it privately? Acknowledge it publicly? Attempt to hide it? Show it off?

Although we might be tempted to ignore failure, the fact is that the seeds of success are often in the ashes of failure.

Contained deep within each way to fail are practical, valuable, tangible lessons that can help us all move on, evolve, grow, adapt, and succeed. Less important than failure itself is the direction we take from it.

Or at least that’s what I think. But I’m interested in your thoughts, opinions, lessons, stories and links. Valeria and Elli have prepared some key questions, links and ideas to guide us along this week’s #kaizenblog; follow along and join in.

Join us for this conversation on Friday, April 23rd at 12pm ET/5 pm GMT on Twitter by using the hashtag kaizenblog. It might be easier to sign into the conversation by using Tweetchat or Tweetgrid. Add your thoughts to the conversation!

I often discard t-shirts after workouts. Sweaty, old, past their prime, knowing that they served their purpose for many years, their worthiness proven but no longer needed, I cast them away instead of taking them home to recover and re-enter the fray.

Gone, into the trash. And it feels oddly good.

* * *

A good friend of mine said the other day that I live in a perpetual grey area.

I’m not afraid to get rid of things, revisit a decision, admit a mistake and shift directions.

But this also manifests itself in less positive ways: accurately forecasting my future feelings about decisions is difficult (and it’s part of the reason I own very little). For example, I hate buying plane tickets for trips far in advance, never sure if I’m going to feel the same way about the trip a month, a week, a day later. Sleeping on a decision is a near necessity for me.

This comes with a cost. Simple and big decisions lie unmade. Options close while under evaluation. Plans remain mere ideas.

Popular opinion notwithstanding, I can make commitments.

And this week starts a new commitment, a commitment to a test, a test of life.

Some of you may not know that in addition to everything else I do I also had a corporate job, albeit recently a three-day a week, flexible and often nebulous job. But it was also a good job: I had the priviledge of being around great people and to be a part of perhaps the best large corporate environment and value system I have seen up close.

Starting this week, it’s just me and my ecosystem (that means it’s about you and me).

Let’s go.

Barrier | Luray, Virginia, USA | Sep 2008

Who would have thought more than 450 people* yesterday would want to read about how to fail?

I’m surprised too. Yesterday I posted “How to Fail: 25 Secrets Learned through Failure” on Unstructured Thoughts and Slideshare. The presentation on Slideshare (aesthetically better than the vanilla text-only web version) was featured as an editor’s choice on the homepage yesterday and drew over 450 views and about 100 downloads. *

* UPDATED 9/24: I wrote this before the day was over. For the first 24 hours, drew over 580 views and 130 downloads.

I generally write about business, innovation and entrepreneurship on Unstructured Thoughts to spare you the business geek writing here.

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