For a long time, failure has been pictured as something negative, something to be a shamed of and something to be kept a secret, but a Swedish psychologist named Samuel West decided to put our worst fears on the table. He opened the Museum of Failure in Helsingborg Sweden in 2017.
Instead of showing their successes as the other museums usually do, the Museum of Failure displays the "failed" products from big companies in the world, such as Nokia, Walmart. Apple and Coca-Cola. "I really hope you can see that they screw up, too. " West told The New York Times. "I hope that makes you feel less nervous about learning something new. "
In fact, West's opinion isn't a new one. Albert Einstein once said, "A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. " This idea has been accepted by lots of companies in the US, for example, Silicon Valley, which is the home to dozens of major technology, software and internet companies. Its slogan (口号) turns out to be, quite surprisingly, "Fail fast, fail often. " According to Simon Casuto of Forbes, the best companies are those that encourage failure, accept out-of-the box thinking, and allow their employees (员工) to make mistakes and see what happens.
However, some people are skeptical about this so-called "culture of failure". They are worried that if failure becomes a "symbol of honor", it may be even seen as "uncool" when someone is trying to reduce (减少) the risk of failure. This may push people to care too little and try too little. "Sometimes people hide behind failure, when they could have prevented it, " wrote Anna Isaac of The Telegraph.
So it's important for you to tell the two kinds of failure apart—the kind that makes you a loser and the kind that takes you forward. The key is whether you've learned something from your mistakes. "Learning is the only process that turns failure into success, " West told The Guardian. "If you don't learn from you failures, then you've really failed. "
