How to Fail: Everything I’ve Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong
From the award-winning author and journalist, How To Fail is a brilliantly funny, painfully honest and insightful celebration of the things that haven’t gone right. The biggest, most transformative moments of my life – those pivotal points where I learned important and necessary truths about myself – came through crisis or failure. They came when I least expected them, when I felt ill-equipped to deal with the fallout. And yet each time, I had survivedBased on Elizabeth Day’s hugely popular podcast, and including fascinating insights gleaned from her journalistic career of celebrity interviews, How to Fail is part memoir, part manifesto. It is a book for anyone who has ever failed. Which means it’s a book for everyone.Including chapters on success, dating, work, sport, relationships, families and friendship, it is based on the simple premise that understanding why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. It's a book about learning from our mistakes and about not being afraid.Uplifting and inspiring and rich in personal anecdote, How to Fail reveals that failure is not what defines us; rather it is how we respond to it that shapes us as individuals. Because learning how to fail is actually learning how to succeed better. And everyone needs a bit of that.
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4th Estate
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London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019
Copyright © Elizabeth Day 2019
Cover design by Anna Morrison
Elizabeth Day asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780008327323
Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008327347
Version: 2019-03-08
For my godchildren: Imogen, Tabitha, Thomas, Walt, Billy, Uma, Eliza, Elsa and Joe.
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
How to Fail at Fitting In
How to Fail at Tests
How to Fail at Your Twenties
How to Fail at Dating
How to Fail at Sport
How to Fail at Relationships
How to Fail at Being Gwyneth Paltrow
How to Fail at Work
How to Fail at Friendship
How to Fail at Babies
How to Fail at Families
How to Fail at Anger
How to Fail at Success
Afterword
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Elizabeth Day
About the Publisher
One of my earliest memories is of failure.
I am three years old, and my sister is ill. She has chicken pox and is lying in her bedroom upstairs, hot and crying, the duvet twisted around her small limbs, while my mother tries to soothe her by placing a hand on her forehead. My mother has cool palms that feel good against your skin when you’re sick.
I am not used to seeing my older sister like this. There are four years between us and she has always struck me as the epitome of wisdom. She is someone I adore and admire in equal measure, the person who looks after me and allows me to sit on her back while she crawls around on all fours pretending to be a horse. The person who, before I was born, told our parents firmly that she would like a sister, please, and could they get on with the business of producing one? Whenever my sister draws a picture or makes a castle out of Lego, it is always so much better than my own attempts, and I will lose my temper at this perceived injustice because I so desperately want us to be the same, her and me. My mother will have to remind me that I’m younger, and all I have to do is wait a few years to catch up. But I’m impatient and don’t want to wait. I want, as much as I’ve ever wanted anything, to be just like my sister.
Now, seeing her wet cheeks and pale face, I am upset and fretful. I don’t like her being in any sort of discomfort. My mother is asking my sister what she would like to make her feel better, and my sister wails ‘a hot-water bottle’ and I see a way that I can help. I know where my mother keeps the hot-water bottles, and I toddle off to the cupboard and pick out my favourite one, which has a furry cover made to look like a bear, with a black button nose. I know that a hot-water bottle must be filled, as the name implies, with hot water. I take the bear to the bathroom, a place I associate with the much-hated evenings my mother washes my hair and I fix my eyes on a crack in the ceiling until the unpleasant task is completed. The single thing I hate more than having my hair washed is having my toenails cut.
The only tap I can reach is the one in the bathtub rather than the basin. Leaning over the enamel lip, I stretch forwards to place the hot-water bottle under the nozzle and turn on the tap with the red circle, not the blue, because I’ve learned that blue means cold. But I do not know I need to wait for the hot water to heat up. I imagine it just comes out, automatically, at the requisite temperature.
When I try to put the cap back on, my stubby fingers cannot quite fasten it tightly enough. No matter, I think – the most important thing is to get this hot-water bottle to the invalid as quickly as I possibly can so that she can start feeling better, stop crying, and become my composed, calm and clever older sister again.
Back in the bedroom, I hand the hot-water bottle over to my sister whose tears stop at the sight of it. My mother looks surprised and I feel proud that I have done something she didn’t expect. But almost as soon as the hot-water bottle is in my sister’s grip, the cap loosens and cold water pours out all over her pyjamas. She wails and the sound is worse than the crying that came before it.
