Failure Is the Best Guru

So your garden was a disaster last year and now you are wondering if it's even worth trying again this year. Well the answer is a resounding YES - because failure is the BEST guru!

I often find that the best way to get writing is to articulate a gut feeling by making a very general statement - and then to unpack it. When the unpacking is done, I look back over what I wrote and edit for clarity - and then I make a decision about whether the finished product would be interesting to anyone other than myself. The very first sentence in this article (“I do not like gurus”) is one such statement. I am revealing this aspect of my process because I was in a weird mental space when I wrote this article - and just went with it. So, please come along for the ride, and trust me - I’ll bring it back to gardening, eventually, over the course of the article :)

I do not like gurus. I am not talking about individuals engaged in various practices associated with Indian culture and traditions. I’m talking about the people we often see on our screens, who sell millions of books, and fill stadiums.

They tells us that that YES - we can get that promotion. YES - we can get rich. YES - we can lose that weight. YES - we can find true love. YES- we can have more of the good things and less of the bad things.

They tell us stuff we want to hear - and that all we have to do is read their book, or attend their workshop, and do what they say, and then we’ll have everything we want. But somehow I don’t believe them. Somehow they all remind me of the snake oil salesman of the 18th and 19th century. The guy in the white suit, with the top hat, that addresses everyone in the crowd as “friends”, then runs through a list of very common problems that everyone has - and then offers small bottles of some strange tonic that will make all those problems go away.

I watch these people come and go in popular culture - and so many people buy it hook line and sinker every time - but when it’s all said and done, most people still have all the same problems they had before. They don’t get the promotion. They don’t get rich. They don’t lose the weight. They don’t find true love. And their ratio of good things to bad things remains unchanged.

I don’t want to cast aspersions on the motivations of these gurus. I have no idea why they do what they do. Nor do I feel that I have good insights into the minds of guru-seekers - having never been one myself. Furthermore, I am sure there are some people that are helped by these people. But in general, I think there’s a better guru.

This guru is available to all of us, and costs nothing - but it does not offer any easy answers - because it is failure itself. I think we have it all wrong in our culture. We are hyper-focused on winners, and experience a heavy cocktail of negative emotions when we fail - but this is such a waste of time, and is so damaging to the human spirit and the potential we all have to grow and achieve our goals.

It has four letters, and starts with an F - but this is not a bad word and we need to learn to see failure for the essential part of the learning process that it is.

I started writing this article as a result of a conversation I had with a friend a few days ago. She was undecided on whether there was any point in trying for a garden this coming spring, because her garden last year had been a failure. This was particularly hard for her to take, because she had great success the previous year (her first as a gardener).

All gardeners (myself included) experience degrees of failure, and some experience total failure. I think 2015 was the worst year I ever had - and it really did feel like it was pointless to ever try again. And now thousands of people all over the world watch my videos every day, and are inspired to try gardening - and it was that failure in 2015 that set me on the path to success that got me here. How so, you might ask? Well, because with the right attitude, failure fosters personal growth in a number of ways.

1. Resilience: Continuing to persevere despite failure teaches you that failure is just a thing that happens sometimes when you try something new, and that it will not be a natural consequence of everything you do.

2. Humility: I wrote an article before about the beginners mind and how integral it can be to the learning process. Failure keep us humble and reminds us that we need to learn more.

3. Empathy: I think one of the great tragedies of modern social media is that we often spend too much time in an imaginary world where everyone has a great life. Life is hard for everyone. When we fail, we gain a connection to others, because everyone has setbacks, and everyone fails.

4. Growth mindset: One of the things I have learned as a parent (from observing my kids) is that people seem to instinctively view their failures as fixed indicators of their abilities. Kids often play the “I can’t do it” game whenever they are faced with something new that’s hard. Adults are no different - and the “green thumb” gardening myth is a perfect example of that tendency. By observing setbacks as an impetus to learn, our failures help us grow.

5. Creativity: I can’t speak to modern pop stars that seem (well, some of them at least) to be chosen at birth and are practically handed their careers - but if you look at the story of many famous musicians from the old days - many of these people talk about points in their careers where they almost gave up. These are people who are household names. Somehow they found it within themselves to double down on their art, and they brought joy to millions. It is the same with gardening. Losing all your kale to slugs might make you want to give up on growing kale - but it can also lead you to try new ways of gardening and dealing with pests that will up your game, and possibly help with other (probably inevitable) pest problems in the future.

6. Diagnosis: Failure, more than anything else, informs you that something needs to change. There can be a problem in the making for years that does not present itself until a disaster occurs. While it is frustrating to have major setbacks - they usually tell us where we need to improve - and with the right attitude, they help us improve as gardeners over time.

Final Thoughts

I don’t know how failure became an F-word, but we need to stop looking at it that way - and we need to cut ourselves more slack when things go down the drain. It’s natural to get down, or frustrated, or downright angry - but once the haze of those negative emotions clears away - with the right mindset, we can learn and grow from our failures. We don’t need gurus - we just need to take the advice that any good parent would give a child: You don’t have to be the best - just try your best, and keep trying and don’t give up. Do that, and you’ll look back at this moment as just one little bump along the road. Its good advice for kids and its good advice for us all. If anything went wrong in your garden last year - just keep trying, and good luck!

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Here’s a video where I talk about my top ten garden fails - and how I learned from them: