The Lovely Teaching And Restorative Powers of…Failure
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Hey there, hero!
I had a chance to teach the Getting Started in Voice Over class, live, here in LA at The Groundlings, the home of many SNL stars and a legendary improv and sketch school.
When teaching the 4th Key, your mindset, the subject of failure came up.
And I think the students in the room might have been a bit shocked at how awesome I think failure actually can be.
Link to register for the VOHeroes Pro Membership VO training: https://www.voheroes.com/2019
Hope this helps!
David
Raw YouTube Captioning
hey there hero it’s David H Lawrence the
17th and today I want to talk to you
about something just isn’t the the
description doesn’t make sense until you
you hear me out on this okay so I want
to talk to you today about the teaching
and restorative nature of failure so I
had a chance to teach recently at The
Groundlings which is a world-famous
improv and sketch comedy school here in
Los Angeles and I was teaching getting
started in voiceover they do a thing
every year where they have people that
teach adjacent to what they teach like
they don’t teach voiceovers so they have
somebody come in they don’t teach
audition technique they have somebody
come in I’m the person they have come in
teach voice over and I do it every year
I’ve been doing it for maybe three or
four years now lovely opportunity to
help people get started in voiceover and
one of the things that I was able to
incorporate this year that I haven’t
done in the last few years is the idea
of the fourth key which is mindset and
what came up during that is the idea of
failure with a purpose failure with
knowledge failure with learning and
failure with humility the question I
asked was look are you willing to fail
and willing to fail because you’ll learn
from the failure and a lot of hands went
up
you know not everybody but a lot of them
went up and I said and I asked the
people in general students that were
there I said in general do you learn
more from your consistent successes or
do you learn more from your failures and
it made them stop and think you know
there’s a lot of cocked heads a lot of a
lot of eyes going up in the air because
this concept is something like you’d
think okay
success that’s great I’ll keep doing
that over and over and over again which
is certainly something you can learn
from do this one thing
the same way every time and you’ll
usually experience success and in terms
of my definition of success do more of
what works and less of what doesn’t you
want to know what works and you want to
know that it’s consistent and it’s not
just a one-time thing
but it’s been my experience and I wonder
if it’s been yours
where you learn a lot more from when
things take a hard left turn things just
don’t don’t go well when you’re able to
see what you couldn’t see until the
failure occurred this past week I gave
this free class on getting started in
voiceover leading up to the registration
period being open for my new classes and
the very first day things went horribly
wrong I thought I was being helpful when
I changed a little bit of code on the
website and it turned out not only was
it not helpful it stopped everybody else
from being able to see the very first
day’s videos and we had talked a lot
about you know we’re starting this thing
on Tuesday after Labor Day blah blah
blah and no one could see the video and
I woke up to like no comments no nothing
but a couple of complaints and it took a
while for Steve who’s been just great as
usual Steve and I to figure this all out
and when we finally did it was like okay
we got to send out a node we got to make
some changes and we’ll know better next
time and that was the big takeaway like
it could have easily gone way south
where someone got upset or someone got
annoyed or like why did you let this
happen why did you change the carefully
place to me basically you know being
asked that question but Steve’s not like
that I’m not like that I think we both
share the idea of loving finding out how
things actually do work and finding out
exactly what it takes to straighten
things out when they don’t work so the
teaching opportunity and this idea of
hey that’s pretty cool
it wasn’t the end of the world it wasn’t
something we couldn’t recover from you
know if something fails and you die well
then you don’t have to worry about
learning anything after that anyway
right but the idea that failure gives
you the opportunity for a teachable
moment failure teaches you humility you
don’t have all the answers you’re still
a work in progress that humility teaches
you restoration it teaches you
Redemption it teaches you all kinds of
wonderful valuable things look don’t get
me wrong I love being successful I love
when something happens I love when a
plan falls into place and it works out
but I do have a real enjoyment when I
experience failure especially because I
have the attitude of what happened what
can I learn from this what can I do
better in the future and I wonder if
that’s something that is something you
ascribe to or something that you
struggle with because there are a lot of
people who look at failure as just the
worst the worst you know especially when
it’s like everything’s on the line and
you fail those are the most humbling
moments and the most teachable moments
I’ve found so tell me in the comments
below how do you look at failure what do
you look at when you fail do you examine
what happened and try to figure out what
went wrong do you just simply say I suck
I’m no good I’m not I’m doing the wrong
thing in life what happens when you
experience failure and do you find it as
I’m not gonna say enjoyable but
acceptable and almost noteworthy when it
happens let me know comments below happy
to hear from you if you want to join my
list and get notified when these videos
come out we’re doing one a day for the
rest of the year and we’re doing pretty
good on this we’re up to number what two
to 52 at this point so we’re doing okay
we’re meeting we’re meeting the
challenge right and of course this week
is the week that if you
study with me in the vo heroes Pro
membership check it out at vo heroes
comm slash 2019 we’d love to have you as
one of our new class members and I’d
love to help you in your pursuit of
voiceover I’m David H Lawrence xvii I
thank you so much for watching and I
will talk to you tomorrow.
Very true. Ive had to learn not only from failure, but how to handle it better. In the past I would berate myself first for failure, getting retty hard on myself out of the fear of failure as well. Aggrevation would naturally rise up, then i would calm down, and fix the issue. But moving on from that negative place was hard.
But since then, what has really helped me is to make peace with the areas I struggle in. To make peace with the failure, so when it happens I am not shocked by it. You know what I mean? I no longer expect perfection RIGHT AWAY. I now allow it as a possibility- a possible part of the process.
I have also learned a HUGE lesson that failure wont kill me. Lol. One of my BIGGEST encounters with failure was my first audiobook. (David, you remember me calling you in panic on that one). But it all worked out. I didnt die. The book was a huge success. I got that as a memory that carries me every time I work. I will never forget that experience.
Nietzsche said, “My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati [literally, “love of fate,” the embracing of one’s fate]: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it … but love it.”
As in training and execution, so in life. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve profited greatly from being (proverbially) slapped upside the head by adversity. Our normal lot is to go on in our established direction until pushed by something that opposes that trajectory (yup, consider Newton’s first law of motion). My most profound lessons have come quickly from such opposing forces. “Bring it on!”
My greatest failure, with regard to VO training for me, is “failure to launch.” Having enjoyed my semi-retirement (still doing contract work) since 2013, I finally decided to “go back to school.” So, here I am, launching into whatever lies ahead.
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.-Henry Ford
It isn’t easy but you learn so much from it. I don’t love to fail but once I get over the emotional charge and look back I see all the value in the situation. I learn way more from failure but I do love a good success! 🙂
Failure is a great teacher. It can be frustrating sometimes, but it has value non-the-less. Thanks for the video David.
My beloved long-time acting teacher, Michael Howard says, “The road to fulfillment of an aesthetic idea is paved with failures…True, it is the fear of failure, not the failure itself which is the enemy. In a larger sense, the artist must hold to her commitment to a theatrically unusual, startling, productive idea, even if it is greeted by naysayers as as inadequate or unacceptable. The artist herself will discover if that idea is a dismal failure, in spite of the naysayers, a great beginning. Chance it. It is that fear of failure that makes the artist settle for what’s easy, conventional, acceptable.To be willing to fail, to have your eye on a truth that is perhaps hidden and elusive, and to pursue it close to ridicule, even to derision, takes extraordinary courage. Actor courage….To fail again and again has buried in it the potential for developing that one illuminating and deeply satisfying moment that is the secret of good acting, important acting.”
Thank you, David, for reinforcing this important truth!