You listen to enough TED Talks and entrepreneurial podcasts, and you start to notice a pattern. They all spout the importance of failure - almost like it's a rite of passage to success.

Fail fast. Fail forward. Fail better.

Failure, they say, builds resilience. Separates the strong from the weak. It's character-forming, growth-fuelling.

So long as you get back up and try again.

What frustrates me is how often they skip the part that actually matters - how to make failure worth something more than just a montage to your favourite pop punk song.

They don't educate audiences on the importance of honesty, and I feel like they do a disservice by skipping the messy journey of self-reflection that actually allowed them to get back up and go again.

In my experience, getting back up and trying again hasn't been possible without honestly looking at the wreckage and saying to myself:

“Yeah. I cooked that. That was on me. What I could control, I didn't, and this is the outcome.”

Magic mirror on the wall

Just like the Evil Queen in Snow White found out, sometimes the outcome of honesty isn't exactly what you want or expect - but that makes it all the more important.

I believe failure invites the opportunity for honest reflection by leading you to a fork in the road with a cart of bricks.

These bricks represent the things that went wrong - the systems that broke down, the risks left unaddressed, the words you shouldn’t have said, the moves you should’ve made differently. The parts of failure that bear your fingerprint.

At this fork you can choose to go left. ^Because nothing was going right This path is an uphill stint. It's challenging, it's uncomfortable, it almost seems impossible - but it gets easier. Not because it flattens out, but because you begin building strength. You become fitter. You're emptying the cart one brick at a time, examining each one as you place it, facing it, accepting the mistakes made but in doing so, forging a new path that'll lead you to the top of the trail.

The top of that trail is where you find a better version of you.

This is the process of becoming resilient.

Or, you can go right - an easy path that leads to flowing water, with a canoe waiting for you. But before you jump in, you have to quickly throw in all of the bricks you've carted with you.

But that's okay.

The river seems calm enough.

The canoe seems stable enough.

Lots of room to throw your bricks in.

Until it's not.

Once you’re downstream, you realise it’s more turbulent than expected. There’s less room than you thought. And… is that a leak?

Then you see the sign, ominously looming from the riverbank:

The River Denial

So if you ever have the opportunity to face that fork in the road, remember:

Failing + Honesty = Growth.

This isn't a clever metaphor for me, it's the truth of my own journey - it's the fork I've encountered, and not once have I dipped my toes in the water.

I’ve failed a lot.

I’ve failed in ways that have cost me a job. Caused a loss of self-confidence.
Deteriorated the trust in my own ability to be more than just a shell of who I once was.

But I've never failed twice in the same way - because I chose to conduct my self-reflection through a lens of honesty and integrity.

I had a personal story written here on how I accredit honesty to overcoming one of my greatest failings. However, as I wrote and iterated the story, it grew into something that warranted its own space to breathe. I’ve included a shorter personal story of failure below, but if you want to read a more in-depth tale - you can read it here: Failure - A Personal Story

Honesty in action

At the start of 2023, a business I co-founded closed its doors. I had spent six years building it.
Six years not just of my life, but of my partner’s as well - she stood with me through the highs and lows.

I could tell you that it wasn't me that failed. That the business only had to close because of regulatory changes outside our control. Changes that wiped out 50% of our short-term business overnight.

But in order to move on, I couldn't accept that as the whole story. If I did, I’d remove the ability to make that failure worth something.

The truth? The business closed its doors because I didn't conduct a risk analysis on regulatory changes that were known about for six months. I failed to understand the risk. I failed to treat it seriously. I failed to mitigate it appropriately.

Honesty ≠ Self-Destruction

This is the important bit of honesty - the checks and balances of it.

Honesty isn’t:

  • Mentally beating yourself up.

  • Repeating like a sycophant, “I am a failure.”

  • Collapsing into shame.

  • Doing so much damage to your own psyche that you become a victim.

It’s:

  • Identifying the environment that didn’t help, but naming your part in that environment.

  • Holding the contradiction.

  • Taking accountability without abandoning yourself.

  • Utilising the bricks to forge a sturdier path.

But most importantly: recognising that you failed - but you aren't a failure.

Where has this honesty gotten me today?

Am I a gazillionaire? No.
Am I an exec in the ASX50? No.
Am I debt-free, living some #inspo lifestyle? Definitely not.

But I'm better for the failed attempts. I'm fortified. I rarely notice small setbacks. I bounce back quicker when things don’t go to plan - all because I built something better with the bricks I could’ve drowned under.

It might not be the pop punk montage we all know and love, but I’d still call that a solid success - built on a foundation of honesty.