Psychobabble

MYTH 16

There is no failure, only feedback

I am very fond of Thomas Edison’s response to cross-­examination regarding his quest to find the right filament for his prototype light-bulb. It had been proving a laborious, expensive and unrewarding business, so you have to admire the inventor’s pluck when he responded: ‘I haven’t failed. I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.’ The inventors of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) would have approved strongly of Edison’s attitude, not least because his eventual success appears to validate NLP’s cherished maxim that ‘there is no failure, only feedback’. But can we really apply this principle unilaterally without turning ourselves into something scarcely recognisable as human?

By all means let’s learn ...