﻿﻿[music]
Elizabeth Day: All of us fail in myriad ways almost
every single day and yet, we live in an age where it
is very difficult to be honest about failure, where
it seems as if everyone else is nailing their life.
Because we live an age of curated
perfection of social media, of Instagram
filters and it can feel quite lonely sometimes to be vulnerable.
It is paradoxically when we are our most
vulnerable and when we choose to be
open and honest about that vulnerability
that we become our strongest selves.
Because not only do we learn more about who we are, but we're
able to connect on a very human level with other people.
In October 2017, a long-term relationship came to an end.
It was brutal. It was out of the blue
and it was three weeks before my 39th birthday.
I face my 39th birthday was something akin to trepidation because I was
in no way where I have thought I would be at that stage in my life.
During my 30s, I had had a very busy time.
I had got married and then divorced.
I had tried and failed to have children.
I had two unsuccessful rounds of IVF and a miscarriage at three months.
When I look back at my 30s, I realized that they
had been a decade of some professional success.
I had written four novels.
I was lucky enough to make my living as a journalist, but they had been
a decade also of immense personal transition and personal sadness.
At the back of this relationship ending, I took myself
to LA, which is a very good place to go to lick your
wounds because it's sunny and the time difference means
that you don't get that many emails after 2 P.M.
It was while I was in LA that I find myself listening to a lot of
podcasts because, as anyone who has ever been heartbroken will
know, when you're in that state of mind, every single pop song
seems to have a peculiar, a specific resonance to your heartbreak.
One of the podcasts I was listening to was
Where Shall We Begin with Esther Perel.
She is a fantastic relationship therapist and she basically opens up
the door to her consulting room during the course of this podcast.
You get a bird's eye view of relationships
going wrong and then being put right.
At the same time as I was listening to this
podcast, I was having the most incredible
conversations with my predominantly female friends
about what it meant to have loved and lost
and what we had learned from various heartbreak,
and where we were professionally and what
this meant, and what it meant not to have
children when one had always thought one would.
I began to look very differently at my
failures and I began to see that each one had
taught me something so valuable about who
I was and what I wanted going forwards.
Actually, each time I had ended a job
or ended a relationship or a friendship
had fallen by the wayside, it had been
a lesson wrapped up in a mistake.
It had been a nudge from the universe in a slightly different direction.
I started to wonder how great it would be if we could open up those
conversations into a more public forum
and that was the genesis of How To Fail.
For the first eight guests, I really corralled a lot of
friends and contacts and got them to do it as a favor.
I asked each guest before they appeared
to come up with three failures.
Three instances in their life where they felt
that things haven't gone according to plan.
They could range from the seemingly superficial, bad dates,
failed driving tests, lost tennis matches to the more profound.
It is a great honor now to listen to those people
stories because the topics we've discussed
include living with depression, homelessness,
death by suicide, failed family relationships.
It really has been the most beautiful journey of discovery.
Those first eight episodes I put out into
the world genuinely thinking that maybe half
a dozen people might listen and two of
those people would probably be my parents.
I sold my wedding dress on eBay to fund the first few episodes.
I drew my own logo with felt-tip pens, as you
can probably tell if you've ever seen it.
Anyway, How To Fail went out there in July 2018 and within
three weeks, it was number three on the iTunes chart.
It was, ironically, the most successful thing I have ever done.
[laughter]
Elizabeth: It's been a really incredible thing, this journey,
because it's made me realize how much we were all thirsting to talk
about failure and how alone so many people feel in their failures
and how ashamed they feel of acknowledging them in public.
It's really been wonderful opening up
a space where people can be more honest.
One of the most inspiring guests I've ever had on
the podcast is a man called Johnny Benjamin, who
is not a household name, but is a phenomenal mental health campaigner.
When Johnny was 20, he was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.
Shortly afterwards, he found himself standing on
the edge of Waterloo Bridge, about to take his own life.
The pain had got so great that he could see no other way out.
It was at that moment that a stranger walked past him
and, noticing Johnny's distress, stopped to talk to him.
It was this single act of compassion
and connection that pulled Johnny back from the edge.
Six years later, Johnny launched an internet
campaign to try and find that stranger.
319 million people responded and eventually
Johnny was reunited with Neil Laybourn.
The two of them are now best friends and they tour the country
talking to corporations and schools about mental health.
When Johnny was telling this story to me, it was extremely emotional.
We were both in tears and it caused a wave of listener response.
So many people got in touch to say that
Johnny's bravery and courage in speaking about
that had helped them feel it was worth continuing,
had helped them feel it was less alone.
Really, what I'd like to end on is that idea that
however bleak it feels, however much you think you have
failed, cling on that little bit longer because the real
failure might be not finding out what happens next.
[music]