The Power of Failure

Learning from what didn’t work, and why that might be the whole point.

I’ve been thinking about failure lately. Not the neat, bounce-back kind. The other kind — the ones that live in your body longer than you expected. The ones that shape how you see yourself, even years later.

We’re told it’s part of life. That it makes us stronger. That it teaches us something. And sometimes that’s true.

But failure doesn’t always arrive with a lesson in its hand. Sometimes it just shows up and rearranges everything. The job. The relationship. The version of your life you were counting on.

But before I go any further, it’s worth asking: What do I even mean by “failure”?

Is it losing — meaning, the opposite of winning?
Is it simply not getting the outcome you hoped for?
Is it not succeeding, or something like not succeeding on time?

Honestly, it’s probably all of the above. And it’s often personal.

Failure, like pain, is subjective.

But for the sake of this piece, when I say “failure,” I’m talking about those moments when you didn’t end up where you thought you would. When the outcome didn’t match the effort. When you lost something, like a job, a relationship, a version of yourself, and had to figure out what to do next.

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We live in a culture that worships success. Everything we do is supposed to work, and the first time, preferably. If it doesn’t, it’s marked as a failure. Not a learning experience. Not “take one” of sixteen. Just failure.

We applaud success like it’s the only valid outcome. We hold it up as proof of worth, intelligence, discipline, talent, likability, even morality. And by contrast, failure gets pathologized, or treated as a sign of laziness, lack of preparation, or some personal shortcoming.

Have you ever spoken to someone going through a divorce? It’s one of the clearest examples of how we conflate an ending with a failure. The cultural stigma is shifting (thankfully), and we’re slowly starting to accept that not all relationships need to last a lifetime in order to be meaningful. Still, if you could hear the things people say about themselves when a relationship ends—divorce or otherwise— it’s disheartening. They see themselves as failures.

Didn’t get into the school you wanted? Failure.
Didn’t get the part in the play? Failure.
Didn’t get the promotion? Lost the game? Got rejected?
Failure, failure, failure.

It’s as if anything that doesn’t go exactly how we hoped is evidence we’re doing life wrong.

Which brings me, oddly enough, to research and experimental design.
Stay with me...

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The null hypothesis

When I was in college, I had to take experimental psychology and run my own study — research methods, statistics, data collection. Sounds boring, right? Actually though, it’s kind of fun once you get the hang of it.

In research, you start with a hypothesis, which is something you expect or hope to find. Like, say: the more attractive someone is, the faster they’ll get waited on in an open-seating restaurant. So you design an experiment, gather your data, and hope it proves you right.

But what happens if you’re wrong? Is the experiment a failure?
Nope.
Not even a little.

Validating the null hypothesis — meaning, finding that there isn’t a statistically significant effect— is still incredibly valuable.

It tells you something. It’s data. It suggests that maybe your theory wasn’t wrong, but incomplete. That something else is at play. That maybe attractiveness matters, but it isn’t the whole story. Maybe it’s tone of voice, clothing, body language, time of day, or just luck.

Null results give you room to ask better questions. Different questions.
They don’t shut the door…they might actually open it.

What if we thought about life that way?

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Maybe life could be a little like an experiment

In research, when your hypothesis isn’t supported, you don’t spiral into shame or self-loathing. You don’t say, “Well, I guess I’m a terrible scientist. Let me scrap the whole career.”

No. You pause. You revise. You re-evaluate the method, the question, the variables. You check your assumptions. You talk to colleagues. You ask for a second set of eyes. Maybe you missed something. Maybe the question was too narrow. Maybe there’s something you hadn’t considered yet.

And then — you try again.

But in life? We do almost the opposite.

When something doesn’t go how we hoped, we make it personal.

Didn’t get the job? You must have done something wrong.
Got rejected? Clearly, you weren’t good enough.
Didn’t know what to ask for? You should have. You should’ve known better. Heck, maybe you should’ve been someone else entirely.

We treat unmet expectations as evidence of failure and failure as evidence of unworthiness.

But what if we didn’t?

What if we started treating those moments as data? Not damning evidence, just…information. Feedback. Something to work with. Something to learn from.

What if we approached our lives like we approach good research — with curiosity instead of judgment? Open-ended. Willing to be wrong. Willing to adjust the model. Willing to run another study.

What if a rejection was just a data point?
A breakup, a redirection?
A “no,” a nudge toward clarity?

We’d still feel disappointment. We’d still have to grieve the things that didn’t happen. But maybe we wouldn’t collapse into shame. Maybe we’d start to see our so-called failures as part of the process — not proof we’re broken, just proof we’re in it.

The hardest part isn’t being wrong. It’s believing that being wrong means something about who we are. But it doesn’t. It never did.

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That time I almost failed out of college

Let me tell you a story about the time I almost failed out of college, and how, for a long time, I treated it like a moral indictment. Like it proved something about me: that I wasn’t disciplined enough, smart enough, or mature enough. That I didn’t belong. I used to talk about it with a little half-laugh, but underneath was embarrassment. A sideways glance of shame.

After high school, I spent two years at a community college. It was a practical decision: I could live at home, save money, and ease into things. I had a job I liked and wasn’t quite ready to leave. And if I’m being honest, I probably wasn’t ready to be on my own anyway. The structure helped.

I was a good student in high school. Not perfect, but I did well enough. I took AP classes, started college coursework as a senior, and coasted through my last year with most requirements already met. I carried that into community college — where I made the Dean’s List more than once, and built good relationships with professors. I did my fair share of sleeping in, missing class, and turning in sloppy work, but I did well.

After two years, I felt ready for the “real” thing — the university experience. I applied to the major university in my state, got in, and moved to the new city that summer so I could start working right away. I transferred stores, and to my surprise, they gave me managerial duties. Managerial duties. At twenty. Red flag much?

Anyway, I was working a lot. I was also dating someone, so my evenings were accounted for. And then there was the drinking. There was a lot of drinking in that chapter. It was the thing I did ever evening after work and every weekend. Basically, when I wasn’t working, I was hanging out with friends and probably drinking. You can see where this is going.

By the time classes started, I was overloaded, distracted, and deeply unprepared for the shift. Commuting through a bigger city, navigating a massive campus, trying to find parking, trying to show up at all — it was a lot. I had nearly a mile to walk from the lot to my first class every day. I mean, who designs a system like that?

So, naturally, I started skipping. It was easy. In a lecture hall with 250 people, no one notices your absence. Even in the smaller classes, no one asked where I’d been.

It was the opposite of community college, where professors knew me, knew my name, my major. Here, I was invisible. And invisibility made it easier to disappear.

When I did show up, I was lost. I’d missed weeks of material. I didn’t know what we were studying. By the time finals rolled around, I knew I was absolutely, completely screwed.

I tried to pull it together. I turned in what I could. Squeaked out a couple of passable grades. But I also earned my first Ds — ever. And they felt like more than letters. They felt like a verdict. A declaration: You don’t belong here.

I went home for Thanksgiving break knowing things weren’t good, but I hadn’t told anyone. Not yet.

It wasn’t until I was getting ready to drive back that it all caught up with me. I left, got about 10 miles down the road, and turned around. Walked back into my mom’s house and broke down. I told her everything — that I was failing, that I couldn’t do it, that I was going to be put on academic probation. That this version of college, this much freedom, this lifestyle — none of it felt right. None of it felt like mine.

What I needed, really needed, was to leave.

So we figured it out. I transferred to a smaller state school closer to home. I moved into my own place and got a new job…a fresh start after Christmas.

And yes, I was officially on academic probation. My GPA when I left that university? A 1.9. Not exactly inspiring.

And at that age? It felt massive. Like the whole world was falling apart and I was the one who wrecked it. College was supposed to be the next step. The only step.

It cost money — money I didn’t really have. It put stress on my family, on my mom, who was trying her best to support me from afar. And now I was behind. Delayed. I’d set us all back. I remember feeling like I’d ruined everything — that this one failure had defined me.

But that next semester, something shifted. I had professors who learned my name. Asked where I’d been. Held their own office hours. I felt visible again. Accounted for. And that made all the difference.

I pulled up my GPA, eventually graduating with something close to a 3.5. More importantly, I actually enjoyed college. It felt human-sized.

But for a long time, I saw the whole detour as failure. Even after things got better, I carried the shame like luggage: How could I have been so careless? How could I let things fall apart like that?

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Now, I see it differently. It wasn’t failure. It was a misfit, a mismatch. It was context.

And it was also a hard year. One of the hardest of my life. I was contending with personal and identity issues I didn’t yet have language for. I didn’t feel settled in myself. I didn’t know what I needed. I only knew that I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing.

Looking back, that year was heavy in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time. It ended well and I landed in a good place but the shame lingered. Not just because I nearly failed out of college, but because I couldn’t manage my life. Not alone. Not yet. And that felt like weakness.

The irony, of course, is that it wasn’t weakness at all. It was one of the first times I told the truth about what I needed — and let someone help.

And the thing is, I made real connections in that season, even in the mess. One of my closest friends came from that chapter. We even started grad school together. At twenty-one, we promised to marry each other if we were both still single by the time he turned forty. (The timeline skewed in his favor because he is older.)

We’re both married now — to other people. He has kids. Life looks nothing like we imagined. But I can’t imagine my life without him.

And I wouldn’t have met him if I hadn’t crashed and rerouted.

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The card

This is a story I don’t tell very often, but it shaped my professional identity for many years.

It happened in the early years of my career, back when I still looked too young to be taken seriously. (To be fair, people have always told me I looked much younger than I was. At twenty-five, I looked nineteen. At thirty, maybe twenty-two. I feel like my face has finally caught up now, though.) I was carded for liquor until I was almost 40 — and not just because it was “policy.”

Anyway, I was about twenty-eight. A few years into the work. Still finding my footing, but steady enough to know what I was doing…most of the time at least.

It was a first session. An older client. We’d just sat down when the questions started: how old was I? Did I have kids? What kind of “life experience” did I really have?

I answered honestly. I was used to those questions by then. But this time, the disdain was visible. The session didn’t go well. They ended after that one meeting, and I understood why, even if it stung. I was too young, they said. Too inexperienced in life. They just didn’t think I could help them.

A few weeks later, I got a card in the mail. A simple thank-you card with payment for the session tucked inside.

Inside the card was written:

“I know one day you’ll be a good therapist.”

I still think about that sentence.

It wasn’t cruel. In fact, I think they meant it kindly. But it landed like failure. Like you’re not enough…yet. Like everything I had given, including my education, my training, my care, my time — wasn’t quite real until someone else decided I was ready.

And I kept that card. For years.

It sat in a box in my office, tucked between old notepads and books I hadn’t opened in a while. I don’t know why I kept it exactly. Maybe because it haunted me. Maybe because some part of me agreed with it. Maybe because I wanted to prove it wrong. I’d pull it out every so often, stare at it, put it back.

It’s somewhere in the garage now. Still in a box. Still part of my story. Even if a quiet part.

That’s the thing about failure, or the perception of it: it doesn’t always come from a catastrophic moment. Sometimes it’s a single sentence. A passing comment. A look. Something that makes you feel like the version of you that showed up, with all your preparation and heart, still wasn’t enough.

But here’s what I know now: I was a decent therapist, even then. Maybe not as seasoned. Maybe not as practiced. But I was present. I cared. I listened hard. I didn’t need a stamp of approval to be real.

And looking back, that card wasn’t proof I had failed. It was just feedback from someone who needed something I didn’t yet offer — not because I lacked something essential, but because we were mismatched.

Still, it took me years to see it that way.

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Running fails

If you’re a runner — or do any kind of sport — you know that “failure” is part of the package. Some days, everything clicks. Other days, nothing goes to plan.

I’ve trained for months and dialed in the nutrition, perfected the gear, mapped every mile only to have everything unravel on race day.

My first marathon ended with a dislocated kneecap around mile 19. I limped the final seven miles, furious with myself. Not just for the injury, but for failing to hit my goal time. Beneath the pain was shame. I’d trained so hard. How could I still have gotten it wrong?

I came back two years later (after physical therapy and a year in a brace) and ran another marathon. I was stronger, steadier, no injuries. It was joyful. But I still remember the ache of that first one: how quickly unmet expectations turn into self-blame.

This is me after a fun and happy finish to my second marathon.

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And then there was my 40th birthday. I decided to run a 50-mile ultramarathon. Not 40. If you’re a runner, you know why it was 50 and not 40.

I trained hard. I was ready. I had a crew. I felt good.

And then, somewhere halfway through the day, I got sick. Out of nowhere the nausea hit, and it was the kind that touches everything. I tried to keep going, but without fuel it’s hard to keep going. With too many breaks it’s hard to meet your time checks.

So I didn’t. I stopped at 40 miles and called it.

A decade earlier, that might’ve gutted me. But this time? I was disappointed, yes, but also proud. I ran 40 miles. I adjusted. I didn’t push past what my body could handle. I spent the day with people I love.

Running taught me that failure doesn’t mean you didn’t prepare hard enough. It just means life still has the last word. And sometimes, the real story isn’t about finishing — it’s about how you respond when things fall apart.

When it comes to running, I’ve had more “wins” than fails, but the fails hit hard. Probably because of the time and sacrifice that comes with long-distance running.

When you train for months, it’s hard to cope with a race day not going your way. And the body is so unpredictable that we simply have to do our best, show up prepared and hope that our body cooperates. Sometimes it does — like when I ran a sub 2-hour half-marathon, and sometimes it doesn’t — when I ran the same half the next year and felt fatigued, adding 14 minutes to my time. Same race, same course, one year apart.

Life can be a little like this too.

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But, what about the big stuff?

What if we really do fail? At the things that matter most? What if we lose the job, the relationship, the savings, the version of life we were counting on?

That’s real. That happens. And not everything can be reframed into a clean “lesson.” Some failures are just devastating. Some losses don’t lead to something better. Sometimes we don’t bounce back. We just...keep going. Carrying something heavier than we were before.

But even then, it’s not nothing. It’s experience. It’s data. It’s the slow, often painful gathering of what it means to be human in a life that doesn’t guarantee much.

Failure doesn’t always make us stronger. But it can make us more honest.
More tender with others. More attuned to what actually matters…to us, and to those around us.

It can pull us closer to the ground, and sometimes, that’s where we finally feel real. Sometimes that’s where we learn to be more present. To show up. To answer the phone. To take the walk. To ask for help.

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I’ll tell you this, though:

I’ve witnessed some of the greatest comebacks of all time in my work. And I don’t mean the kind where someone falls off Everest and makes it back to the summit. I mean the ones where they fall, get up, gather their belongings, and quietly walk off the mountain.

I’ve seen people “fail” in spectacular ways. I’m talking infidelity, DUIs, career losses, divorces, children going no contact, loss of nearly everything, financial destitution, deaths. I’ve seen what happens when people are able to face those moments, name them honestly, and regroup.

And I’ve seen what happens when they don’t, can’t or won’t.

We all carry things, like regrets, choices, moments we’d take back if we could.
But the more aware we are of them, the more willing we can be to face them without flinching, the more capacity we have for a life that still feels meaningful.

Even if some of the pieces don’t fit back the way they used to.

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The takeaway…

Sometimes we’re quick to label anything that doesn’t go how we hoped as a failure. A relationship that ends. A semester that nearly tanks a degree. A marathon that falls apart at mile 19. A rejection that sticks with you for years.

And sure, some things really are failures. They cost us something. They hurt. They carry consequences. But not everything that doesn’t work out is a disaster. And not everything we don’t finish means we’ve failed.

Sometimes it’s just a misfit. A redirection. A signal that something wasn’t aligned — not with who we are, or what we need, or where we were at that moment.

It’s easy to internalize those moments as proof that we’re not good enough, not ready, not capable. But more often, they’re just information. A little more data about what works and what doesn’t. What matters and what doesn’t. What’s sustainable and what isn’t.

That’s what the null hypothesis taught me:
Even when the result isn’t what you hoped for, it’s not meaningless. It tells you something. It shapes your next steps. It helps you ask a better question next time.

And maybe that’s what real healing or recovery looks like. It’s not bouncing back perfectly, but gathering what you can, adjusting your expectations, and staying curious enough to keep going.

And most of us do. Even when things fall completely apart. Even when we feel like we’ve blown it. We recalibrate. We regroup. Even if it takes weeks, months, or years…we keep showing up, in whatever form we can.

Not because it’s easy. It’s actually really hard sometimes. But because that’s what people do — we learn, we adapt, we revise the hypothesis, and we try again.

Until next time…

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Thanks for reading!

I’m Jenn — Ordinary Therapist is where I explore the layered, often messy work of being human — things like emotional maturity, relationships, burnout, and healing — through story, reflection, and a creative lens.

If you appreciate thoughtful takes, personal insight, and the kind of honesty that makes room for both complexity and connection, you’re in the right place.

Come back, read a little, comment, subscribe, like — or just hang out. I’m just glad you’re here.

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