Not long ago, I planned on taking a trip up the west coast to Alaska. The goal was to get from San Francisco to Anchorage in as little time as possible, and once there, turn around and head home. For me it was all about how fast I could complete the trip and get to the metaphorical finish line… the journey was secondary. And as I think about that trip I never took, it serves as a sort of cautionary tale for something I’ve been experiencing and want to share with you.

I have a confession to make, I feel like a failure in life. Now, while to many people I may seem like a success, over the past ten years I’ve failed in almost every activity I’ve attempted. Sure, I’ve succeeded in the stuff people can “see” and measure; I graduated with a bachelors and masters degree in mechanical engineering within 4 years, I just earned my doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, one of the world’s most prestigious and competitive universities, I’ve represented the United States at international sporting competitions, I’ve had meaningful internship and career opportunities, and I have some deep and meaningful friendships. That all might sound like a “humble brag” but it really isn’t which is why I’m honestly asking why is this seemingly successful person confessing to being a failure? The answer to that question is twofold, and I suspect is not unique to me and the situation in which I find myself. I suspect like a lot of hard-driven people, one of my biggest flaws is that I expect the world of myself, and in so doing I’ve set the wrong goals. And if you are like me, you could be setting yourself up for continuous and never-ending failure… and disappointment

As I’ve told many people, the darkest, most pitiful day of my life was when I crossed the stage at my undergraduate graduation ceremony. I had just done what many people - including me - thought was impossible; I completed a BS and MS concurrently in 4 years, graduating among the top of my class, while working 20+ hours a week at a factory as a manufacturing tech to pay for my school, participating in 3 honor societies (being an officer in 2 of them), serving as scholarship chair of my fraternity, and competing for the school ski team and rowing team (that summer I would also make the USA U23 rowing team). But in doing so I had essentially eliminated my family from my life, lost almost all of my friends, and slept only 3 or 4 hours a night. Why was I doing this, did anyone ask me to do these things? The answer to the former was I didn’t know, and to the latter was definitely no. I had no reason to do all of these things all at the same time, other than I could, which is not a good reason. And the result was even though I had something to celebrate that day, I had no one to celebrate with and they all felt like empty accomplishments. To everyone around me it appeared I had won, but internally I had lost in every way.

I didn’t need to graduate with concurrent degrees; I’ve been blessed with an outstanding engineer’s mind which would have shown through and provided me with success even if I followed the normal timeline. I was gifted at rowing, but honestly thought that it wasn’t the path I wanted to follow, and most of those social and honor societies I did just because I could, not because I wanted to. There was no need for me to push the way that I did, but I made myself believe that I would find success by pushing myself past whatever perceived boundary I saw in front of me. After the personal catastrophe of my college graduation, I vowed to never destroy myself again. Except that I did, just in a different way.

The next 6 years I set 3 goals for myself, make the Olympics in rowing, earn a PhD from a top ranked university, and invent something I could build a company around. Lofty goals, but I thought I was capable of doing all of these things. In the summer of 2012 I made the USA under 23 rowing team, starting on my rowing path. Things were slow to start, but that was OK, I went to a division III school, and was a nobody in the rowing world. But I kept at it, and by the summer of 2014 I had an ergometer time and rowing skill necessary to enter the post collegiate rowing world as at least somebody worth a glance. I was also accepted to the University of California Berkeley as a Mechanical Engineering PhD student that fall. So, everything seemed like it was progressing towards the goals I had set.

The school year of 2014 into 15 was a great one, I was in a funded lab, I successfully fought for a seat in the California Rowing Club 4X, my boat mates and I won United States Trials and were headed to the world championships. And my research adviser had high hopes that I would create something new which had never been done before, which is something I always wanted to do. But the good times only lasted until August when the setbacks started coming. My boat greatly under-performed and was demolished at the 2015 world championships. We missed Olympic qualification and I would need to make it all the way to the last chance qualifier in 2016 and win to make it to the Olympics, something which is often more difficult than qualifying in the normal world championships the year prior to the games.

Shortly after returning to school for the fall semester the silent tensions with my research adviser boiled over and I left my research lab. It was the right choice for me as well as my adviser because things had started to get contentious and it felt like there was no path forward that would have been good for all parties. Then I suffered a torn hip labrum and learned that I had Femoral Acetabular Impingement (FAI) in my right hip, a potentially career ending injury. For the next year I rowed through the pain, practicing yoga 4 times a week along with training and school to try to achieve my goals. But when USA trials came my boat fell short, and my 2016 Olympic bid was over.

That summer I worked at a small metal shop (SF Metalworks, go check them out, they do great work!) to earn some money, and returned to school the next semester with the hopes of doing something great. I had signed up for a new lab and, after taking a few months off from the sport, started rowing again. But my hip kept getting worse and worse, I had surgery in January of 2017 and would be out for 5 months. Research wasn’t much better, my new lab was more undergraduate centered, and less focused on groundbreaking research. It seemed like my research was going to be another dissertation which resides in the basement of a university library never to see the light of day. Though I had wanted to do something special for my doctoral work, it appeared that the best plan for me was to focus on completing the requirements to earn the degree and leave university to start my life.

And all along, my rowing career kept getting worse. My damn hip just was not improving, and I needed to see a doctor for cortisone shots every few months to enable myself to walk correctly. Over the next half year, I would push my ergometer times to where I needed them, to even consider rowing at the level I had achieved, but my rowing ability had degraded to the point where I could no longer successfully move a boat. Even though I had the drive to win, my body had enough. In April of 2018, I retired from rowing for good. FAILING at my goal of reaching the Olympics.

My research seemed to have stalled over the spring and summer of 2018, and given that I was the only graduate researcher in my lab with limited resources I decided that it would be better for my future to compose my dissertation of work, which I felt was less than the most innovative work possible, than to keep working on something that had little chance of bearing any more fruit. FAILING to develop a world changing technology during my doctoral work. OK, is IS worth noting that I graduated with a PhD from UC Berkeley, which make no mistake, I’m very proud of. I still can’t help but feel, however, like a failure because of its lack of SELF-PERCEIVED importance. Three weeks ago, I looked in the mirror and was disgusted with the failure that looked back at me.

But then I thought about failure, and if failure is really what I think it is. I thought about the reason I failed…. Had I set the wrong goals and were those goals too high? I think by just about anyone else’s standard I’ve succeeded. I’ve worn the USA across my chest in international competition. I have a PhD from the University of California. And while I may not have invented a technology to change the world by the old age of 28, I have made lasting impacts at the places I’ve worked, many of which I still perform work for as an engineering consultant. No, the reasons I thought I failed is because I didn’t really understand what success is. While undoubtably winning an Olympic medal defines success, that is not the ONLY definition of success. I realized that my goals could include bringing the greatest good that I can reasonably do and to improve myself relative to where I was yesterday, not to hit an absolute target. Failure really isn’t what you think it is. It’s not an end. It’s simply an opportunity to take another look at what your priorities are. A friend of mine who I think is pretty successful told me that he’s learned in life it’s not failure that’s a problem, it’s the FEAR of failure that causes problems. You see, we’re all going to fail, but in the process the experience can change our life. We just can’t let failure define us.

As 30 fast approaches (OK, I have a couple of years) I sense I might be crashing again… But I feel my past “failures” are providing me a blueprint to ensure this time around I don’t crash, and can hit my goals. They easy way out would be to relinquish the vision I have for myself and assume a life where I don’t strive for greatness, don’t take responsibility for my short comings, and cease to attempt to make the world a better place for those around me. But that isn’t how I’ve lived my life, doesn’t reflect the teachings of my elders, and would be betraying my personal values.

So instead I’m going to continue to set high goals for myself. I’m going to appreciate the victories as they come along because I’ve learned the losses will come, and trust me, they’re no fun. If you can’t enjoy the victories then what’s the point? But I won’t let the losses be devastating and will instead learn from them, use them to adjust incrementally so I’m not locked into rigid long-term goals. This is much different than an engineering project where rigid goals are sometimes necessary, and success can often be measured with binary conditions. But as I learned in my undergraduate education, success – and failure – isn’t binary, it is multi-faceted, and so success should be measured across all dimensions of life.

Someone once told me “bet on yourself John”, which at the time didn’t make much sense to me. In hindsight, betting on yourself means to orient yourself in a way in which you can achieve success, on all dimensions of life one may value, and if you are as good as you believe that you are, you’ll get where you need to go. Anyone will of course have setbacks living the strenuous life, life is full of them, but these setbacks need not be failures, only opportunities to right the ship and correct its orientation. Just like that trip to Alaska, which I still plan to take, success isn’t only getting to the destination, there's plenty of success to be had along the way as well.

- John M. Madura, Ph.D.

p.s. The photo at the top of the article is near the top of mount Tyndall, I had to climb up 3 different chutes til I found one I could safely ascend. Even though I made it close to the top, I was still about 50 feet short because I took the wrong fork of the chute. The fact I was so close but not quite to the top still bothers me (in a joking, I was so damn close kind of way), even though I hiked over 27 miles and climbed about 10,000 feet in one day... I guess some habits never die.