In this article:
Olympian Blaine Wilson on falling short

Losing is an option

Whether it's a pink slip or an election, failure teaches valuable life lessons.

By Tim Wendel

"Let's face it: Everyone fails so much these days. You can't let it intimidate you. The only way you truly fail is to stop trying altogether."

Tucker Jones, 22, surveys the crowd at the Revolution Coffee Lounge in Washington, D.C. "Show us your pink slip and drink for free" reads a placard at the sign-in table. But Jones and 200 other down-and-out dot-com workers here tonight are more interested in networking than in tying one on.

Since October, nearly 35,000 in this industry have been laid off nationwide. Since Thanksgiving, 135 dot-coms have gone out of business in the Washington area. So people here have followed the example of New York and San Francisco in throwing a Pink Slip Party. Although Jones had warned himself that this was a volatile field, nothing prepared him for how he was let go: five minutes to gather up his gear; security guards to escort him to the door; one of 80 people laid off by his company in a single day.

"It wasn't pretty," Jones says. "But I'm still optimistic about dot-coms and my future. I can take it."

That optimism in the face of failure -- 90% of dot-coms are projected to one day close their doors -- may stem from the simple fact that Jones and his New Economy evacuees are not alone. Across the bright face of America there is a widespread rebirth of an age-old phenomenon: failure.

This Inauguration weekend, Al Gore and his defeat are on as many people's minds as George W. Bush and his victory. Democrats were cruel to recent presidential losers Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale. But now "Gore in 2004" is heard. The loser is a contender.

Next weekend, America will watch the Super Bowl with a new appreciation for the fine line between victor and vanquished: Last year's biggest sporting event lived up to pregame hype as the St. Louis Rams edged the Tennessee Titans in the final play. And there's the endlessly told tale of the Rams' Kurt Warner, who went from undrafted prospect to grocery clerk to last year's Super Bowl MVP. This season he had plenty of company in the Ravens' Trent Dilfer, the Raiders' Rich Gannon, the Broncos' Gus Frerotte and the Dolphins' Jay Fiedler. All led their teams into the playoffs after long stretches of warming the bench and being considered backups at best by experts.

From sports to politics to the economy, a new philosophy about failure has taken root. What used to be viewed as a stigma has been embraced as a badge of honor by many. Call it Failure Chic. Loser Power.

Many of today's successes report they learned a great deal from early loss. For us all, the key to achievement may lie in how well we get up off the canvas.

"Let's face it: Everyone fails so much these days," says Stephen Covey, 68, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. "You can't let it intimidate you. What I tell people, and try to tell myself, is: The only way you truly fail in this day and age is to stop trying altogether."

"Whenever you're down and out, the only way is up" could be the mantra for the wave of pink-slippers washed out in 2000's tide of red ink. In fact, it is in the crash and burn of the current cyber-recession that failure's new allure really caught fire. "People still believe," says Allison Hemming, 32, who threw the first Pink Slip Party for New York's Silicon Alley dot-comers last July. "That's what makes this so different from past downturns. People are so open about failure and what's happened to them."

Three years ago, entrepreneur Greg Jones took out a second mortgage to support his company, WorldRes.com, which links hotel reservations with the Internet. Short-term, the gamble paid off as Jones added 170 employees and raised nearly $50 million for the fledgling dot-com, based in San Mateo, Calif. He took it public last April -- just in time for the shakeout of the New Economy. In August, 60 WorldRes.com employees were laid off and Jones, 39, now needs to raise $10 million to stay afloat.

"Sometimes," he says, "I feel like I'm on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride," the careening Disneyland attraction. "I failed because I had to let those people go. But after enough near-death experiences, you get cocky or numb or somewhere in between. I call it my Zen state of mind. I tell myself I can only focus on what's within my control."

Look up "failure" in the dictionary and none of the definitions is appealing. But talk with those who have won -- or survived to fight another day -- and they often view failure in a favorable light.

Larry Kramer, 50, CEO of CBS MarketWatch, was well on his way to losing his first online startup, Datasport, before he was bought out. His new company had one of the most-talked about IPOs in history -- spiking from $17 a share to $97 1/2 on its first day. Today the stock price is well below that, the company has stabilized, and Kramer keeps an eye out for kindred souls who bought a ticket on the New Economy roller-coaster.

"I like hiring people who have at least one failure on their résumé," he says. "It's a character-building experience and a reminder of how things can be worse. Kind of like the difference between people who lived through a war and ones that haven't."

Jason Zasky believes so much in the future of failure that he began an online magazine about it titled, appropriately, Failure (failuremag.com). "How you view failure can often be generational," says Zasky, 31. "If you talk to people who grew up in the Depression or in a family that experienced upheaval like that, their outlook will often be much different than those coming of age today."

Landmark events such as the Depression, Watergate and the recession of '87 profoundly influence how particular generations react to failure. While the baby boomers have survived economic downturns before, Generation Y-ers are coming face to face with it for the first time. Many expect their new experience to influence popular culture.

"Think of the last time we had hard times," Hemming says. "Almost overnight you were hearing bands like Nirvana. I see the same thing happening soon. Say goodbye to Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Soon it will be some son-of-grunge band we never heard of."

Failure changes how we talk. "I don't say, 'I'll be happy when ...' anymore. Like, 'I'll be happy when I have a new trinket' or toy or reach a new milestone," says 40-year-old Dave Ramsey, a victim of the real-estate collapse that preceded the dot-com meltdown. Worth $4 million in the early 1980s, with an annual income of $250,000, he went bankrupt within 18 months. Now a radio talk show host in Nashville and author of the best seller Financial Peace, Ramsey confides: "I try to enjoy the process. I'm not really connected to stuff or milestones."

A decade ago, St. Louis University communications professor Robert Krizek studied what athletes said after losing a big game. The standard responses were such jock-speak as "We tried and we didn't have it today" or "We're young and still learning."

Recently, Krizek repeated the study and found many of the same clichés. But two new responses had crept to the top of the list: "It was great to be part of this" and "We may have lost, but I got a lot out of it personally."

"As a social researcher," Krizek adds, "I see a shift going on. The stigma seems to be fading."

No matter how much failure is accepted by music and speech, "don't be fooled," says Neil Steinberg, author of Complete & Utter Failure: A Celebration of Also-Rans, Runners-Up, Never-Weres and Total Flops. "Failure still has a sting. Think Bill Buckner."

Any long-suffering Red Sox fan can tell you about the ground ball that rolled underneath Buckner's glove costing Boston the 1986 World Series. Loss does linger. Walter Mondale, loser of the 1984 presidential race, was once asked: When does the sting finally subside? "I'll let you know," he replied.

Ultimately, whether failure is viewed as a sting or spark rests with its victim.

Diana Nyad once called her motivational speech "The Courage to Succeed." In recent years, the former long-distance swimmer changed it to "The Courage to Fail." While Nyad holds the world record for the longest swim in history, 102 miles between the Bahamas and Florida, what she cannot forget is her failed attempt to swim from Havana to Key West, an even greater distance.

"I still fantasize about taking a year and a half off to train and doing that stupid swim," says the 51-year-old reporter with Fox Sports. "It was deeply hurtful. I was on the front page of nearly every paper in the Western world. It didn't make me feel like a failure, but it made me want to make up for it in other ways."

Failure isn't supposed to feel good. It is often gut-wrenching, humiliating. Yet survivors insist there is a tremendous upside.

"You learn more from losing than winning," says Morgan Wootten, the winningest high school basketball coach ever and a recent inductee to the Basketball Hall of Fame. "You learn how to keep going."

Pat Conroy, who wrote The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, has titled his next book My Losing Season. It will deal with the time he spent playing point guard on The Citadel's dismal basketball team. "Losing is underestimated in America," he says. "I don't think you learn anything from winning. It just feels good. But loss you think about. Loss makes you change the way you do things."

The lessons of failure extend even to the circus big top, where a miscue was once considered disastrous. Pavel Brun, artistic director of Cirque du Soleil's Las Vegas shows Mystère and O, says failure is a "blessing, a wake-up call. If you sleep through it, your professional life can be over."

As the boss for hundreds of acrobats, clowns and high-wire performers, Brun says the key to his management style is to be forgiving of failure. If a performer wants to add a new twist to an act, he routinely allows it. Even if he thinks it's a bad idea.

"What is one little mistake in all the things we do within the show as long as nobody is hurt?" Brun says. "It will not have any effect on ticket sales. I may think the suggestion is tacky or tasteless, but I would never tell them that. It's better to let them try, maybe fail, and then we can talk."

In any attempt there's a chance of failure. But coming to grips with disappointment can crystallize what's really important to a person.

Kenneth Kamler, author of Doctor on Everest: Emergency Medicine at the Top of the World, has journeyed a half-dozen times to the world's tallest mountain, never reaching the top. Once, he climbed within 900 feet of the 5 1/2-mile-tall summit before turning back because of bad weather. Some would say he failed, but Kamler disagrees.

"I knew what I had waiting for me at home. My family, my friends. That's what you learn."

Tim Wendel last wrote for USA Weekend Magazine about kids playing one sport year-round. His most recent book is Castro's Curveball: A Novel.

Photograph inside by Matt Mendelsohn/USA WEEKEND.

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What Falling Short Taught Me

by Olympian Blaine Wilson

Superstar gymnast Blaine Wilson arrived at the 2000 Games in Sydney with high expectations and a "mind game" he described to USA WEEKEND Magazine in a Sept. 8-10 cover story. Wilson, 26, was a veteran of the 1996 U.S. Olympic team in Atlanta and a five-time national champion. But he -- and the rest of the USA's male and female gymnasts -- came home without a medal.

His reflections on a high-profile failure in public:

It was Christmas morning when

I finally got around to watching a tape of the Games. I was staying at my sister's condo in the Columbus, Ohio, suburbs and a copy of the NBC broadcast happened to be right there on her TV. So I popped it in. I fast-forwarded most of the tape, just catching highlights. All

I really wanted to watch was the team competition. That's what the Games are all about: five guys trying to be the best in the world. Of course, the world knows what happened: We fell short. As a team and as individuals.

But I hadn't avoided the tape because it would cause pain. Just the opposite. I honestly do not view what happened as a heartbreaking experience. There are times you're supposed to accomplish something special, to be the best in the world, and this simply wasn't our time.

But I believe my time will come again, as long as I keep working hard.

That's why I put off watching the tape. The Games are history. I'm not bitter; what happened in Australia has no negative impact on what I'm doing now. People at NBC will dwell on my failures, but I've had the privilege of being a two-time Olympian.

OK, so what happened in Sydney? Before the Games,

I told USA WEEKEND the sport is 90% mental. That's true. But my team and I suffered because we were exhausted mentally and physically before we got to Sydney. We had to compete in four meets to make the Olympic team -- the last one just a month and a half before the Games. That's far too draining. You need more time to focus on winning at the Games, as opposed to making the team.

I was so physically wiped out, I made mistakes I'd never made in practice. For example, I failed to connect my hand on a parallel bar while swinging forward.

The salvaging factor is that I never gave up. I kept thinking, "You overcame what others could not to get here. Everything will work out in the end."

I have never been afraid to walk up to a competitor and tell him to his face that I'll beat him. Today, I'm still not afraid to say it.

And life is a lot like that: maintaining confidence

in light of disappointment. Inevitably, as I pursue my psychology degree at Ohio State and then a career after that, I'm going to hit highs and lows. Many people experience setbacks on a daily basis. But passion for what you do pulls you through. Not Olympic medals or awards.

If you keep moving forward, you won't fail. That's what the 2000 Games taught me.