Given how rejection and failure now are the trendy building blocks to success – look at how Jack Ma of Alibaba has so spectacularly failed – let me count the ways in which I’ve been rejected and failed.
My first memory of failure was in domestic class. I had to boil milk and I did it in a kettle which apparently is not good for the health of kettles. I was reprimanded and humiliated in front of my classmates and to this day, I do not boil milk.
So it is not true that every failure makes you stronger – there are some that you just accept and move on, and not repeat.
I also failed in art class. I loved dark stuff – I was Goth before Goth was in – and my art teacher would publicly show my dark paintings, and called them “Siew Hoon’s Dark World”. I must have been so scarred by the
experience that I never drew or painted again – till a couple of years ago.
There are some failures that take a while for you to recover from.
I failed to get into local university. My enlightened government had just introduced the New Economic Policy, part of which included racial quota systems for universities. Chinese students found themselves competing for fewer places, and your grades had to be exceptionally high. They called it “positive discrimination”. Wrong. All discrimination is negative.
I also failed in what I thought would be my dream job. As someone who received her grounding in news reporting in Penang, I dreamt of working for the biggest national daily in Kuala Lumpur. I lasted three months.
Some things you just have to walk away from before they corrupt you.
I failed in my first attempt to launch a print magazine in Kuala Lumpur. I spent three months interviewing, writing, editing and designing the publication. The owner ran out of money to print it.
Great experience. I didn’t know I could edit a publication.
I failed to get a job in either the Far Eastern Economic Review or the Asian Wall Street Journal, at that time the two most respected political and economic publications in the region. I was working in Hong Kong at that time, editing Media, and thought I should get out and do some serious
consumer journalism. I didn’t fit their profile. Some failures are fortunate. Over time, I grew to realise the B2B beat suited my style to a T.
I failed in the first business I was involved in – it was the first time I had equity in a publishing venture. My partners and I ran it for five years, we made waves with a new concept in travel trade publishing, but eventually we had to leave, and the publications later closed down.
Great experience. I learnt all the basics of running a business, the most important of which was cash flow. You may have good looking numbers on the balance sheet but if there ain’t no cash in the bank to pay people, you ain’t got a business.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been rejected by book publishers. After my first attempt to publish a travel book, I was told to go away and write ghost stories. It’s the biggest selling genre in Singapore.
Some rejections you don’t take to heart – you persist. My travel book got published. A friend once told me that my style was “to throw something at a wall to see if it sticks”. If it doesn’t, move on. Entrepreneurs tell me it’s good to fail but you’ve got to fail fast. Don’t drag it out.
By the way, I failed in math too and that’s because my teacher did not look or sound like Tom Hiddleston. Some failures you just have to blame on others.