It’s not unusual to hear Elizabeth Day’s dulcet tones, sonorously making their way out of my iPhone. Her chart-topping podcast, How to Fail, is Desert Island Discs for the instagram generation, a pleasing and welcome weekly addition to my earbuds, and those of her many thousands of subscribers – all tuning in to hear guests from Phoebe Waller Bridge to Gloria Steinam, talk about things that haven’t gone right. Talking about failure.
It is, however, unusual to hear her speaking directly to me. Which is what happened last week, when I found myself listening to her unique, reassuring cadence describe her latest book; Failosophy.
Once again, we were talking about failure.
“It feels very surreal to suddenly be the poster girl for failure,” she laughs, “But I completely claim that – it’s really amazing. If I had set out to become the ambassador of something I never would have done it. But the fact that it came about so authentically, is one of the greatest gifts of my life.”
Whilst Elizabeth has long been an award-winning journalist, columnist and bestselling author, it was her podcast, How to Fail, launched in 2018 and now in its ninth season, which made her a household name. Over the last two years, thousands of us have tuned in to hear the failures of names such as Daisy Edgar Jones, Lilly Allen and Love Island’s Ovie Soko interspersed with (initially) adverts for delicious hummus. It was a riveting and reassuring experience; to hear successful people detail everything in their life that – well- failed, and as cathartic as it may have been for us – it was doubly so for Elizabeth.
“The podcast was hugely predicated on my being open about my own failures. It came from facing failure in my life,” she says, of “failures”- from marriage to fertility- that have plagued her despite her resounding professional successes; “ I E-Bayed my wedding dress from my failed marriage to get money for a sound engineer for the first eight episodes.”
The podcast, of course, ran for far more than eight episodes (it is now on its 82nd) and the pennies from her first wedding dress were soon no longer required. It spawned a book; part-memoir, part extended think piece on the nature of failure; How to Fail: Everything I’ve Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong in 2019, and this year’s new release Failosophy.
“In the two and a bit years since the podcast launched, I’ve just found that not only have I had time to finesse my philosophy of failure, but I’ve also just done so much research by asking all of my amazing guests these questions about how they deal with failure. And that meant that I had this accumulated store of practical wisdom that I really wanted to be able to share,” she explains – citing the podcast as her “field work” on the subject, and Failosophy as her final thesis.
Failosophy is really a pragmatic and pocket-sized guide to failure- how to cope with it and what to learn from it. Many of the tenets inscribed within have been mined from the extensive trove of interviews conducted by Elizabeth- already a masterful interviewer for numerous newspapers- on the podcast, and even includes a catalogue of some of her the standout failures emailed to her by her guests.
Does she have any favourites?
“I loved Andrew Scott’s failure to be heteronormative,” she laughs, “That was one of the best failures ever!”
In selecting her guests, she relies on a mix of instinct and reader submissions, as well as ensuring a diverse mix- not only of race, gender and age – but of household names and those, perhaps at the beginning of their career, but who have a fascinating story to tell. There is, however, a particular power to hearing a hugely successful individual, list the many ways they have failed.
“I believe that that’s helpful to people who aren’t famous, because we can so often make modern day gods of the people that we see on the red carpet surrounded by bits of glamour,” she says, “And so to hear that Phoebe Waller bridge has had moments of self doubt, or to hear that Gloria Steinem felt fearful and didn’t always feel comfortable being the iconic feminist campaigner that she is today…all of this is really helpful when we feel like we’re the only ones who are doing a bad job of things.”
If anything, Elizabeth Day is on a mission to reframe how we view failing, and has enshrined in her new book, the seven principles of failure.
“The first one is that failure just is. It’s a fact. It happens to all of us and we can be in control of the emotions that we attach to it. The second one is that you are not your worst thoughts. So you exist separately from the anxious narrative, that sometimes unspools in your brain around failure,” she explains, “The third is that almost everyone feels they failed in some way in their twenties!”
Perhaps this is why How To Fail has resonated thoroughly with so many millennials. The feeling of constantly failing in some way – personally, professionally – hell, even with the ability to pay rent and/or a mortgage, feels ubiquitous.
“The fourth failure is that breakups are not a tragedy,” Elizabeth continues, hitting the nail on the head for a failure that permeates most young women’s lived experience, “Even though they might feel like it at the time, you can genuinely always learn something useful from them. And generally people end up being grateful for them. The fifth one is there’s no such thing as a future you. It’s about the limitations of having a five year plan, because sometimes when you have a very, very ambitious idea, and you don’t achieve it, you end up feeling a failure, but it’s only by your own metric.”
Whilst the sixth principle of failure, Elizabeth describes as “data acquisition”- lending a Silicon Valley-esque spin to the accepted truism that failure always teaches you something – the final principle appears to ring true of Elizabeth’s own experience.
“The final failure principle is that it’s paradoxically, when you choose to be open about your vulnerabilities that you find the greatest source of strength,” she explains, “because actually being honest about what makes us vulnerable, is being honest about what makes us human. And that is a source of extraordinary solidarity and connection. And it can be extremely empowering.”
The subject matter has become accidentally pertinent in our tumultuous 2020, where it seems so many of us are failing at any number of things- from keeping our finances afloat in a pandemic, to maintaining our mental health in a year of fear and panic.
“My advice for anyone feeling they have failed this year is; failure does not define you. Just because you fail, it doesn’t make you a failure,” she says, “You are so much more than your worst, most anxious thoughts about any mistake you might have made.”
So how does the enormously successful Elizabeth Day – the proud poster girl for failure – feel about her own failures now?
“It’s made me feel at peace with them, every single one of them. Even the things that have caused me enormous sadness,I’m at peace with that sadness,” she says, “Without them, I wouldn’t have learned who I really am. I wouldn’t have realised how strong I actually am. I am genuinely grateful for every single one.”
Failosophy by Elizabeth Day is out now.