I threw a party for failures and it was a success?

This didn't go the way I thought it would.

We threw a party.

Accomplished friends were invited to take the microphone.

They were not allowed to talk about their successes, though. Instead, they could only share about failures. The idea was for this to be like the TED Conference, but terrible.

I wanted stories of mess-ups! Fiascos! Flops! Professional and personal embarrassments you’d never post on social media!

We called it Fail-A-Bration.

It was freeing and fun to throw a party about failure. Anything we didn’t get quite right could be excused by saying it was ‘on theme’.

Nametags were spelled incorrectly.

I attempted to make lion cookies for the event . . .

… but they turned out like this:

Brave, brilliant people shared vulnerable stories they wouldn’t have otherwise.

We laughed with them.

We cringed with them.

We cried with them.

After each presenter, the audience rose to applaud with a standing ovation.

This wasn’t a celebration of failure. It was a celebration of courage. It was an invitation to reframe our relationships with failure. It was a reminder that it’s part of the process. It was a proclamation to everyone in the room: You’re not alone! Keep going! Fail more! Fail better!

I thought that’d be it.

Then people started asking if they could throw their own Fail-a-Brations. Event professional and author of The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker shared about it. SELF Magazine did a write-up about it. Companies threw fail parties. I got invited to throw Fail-A-Brations with pediatricians, high-school students, school administrators, creative leaders, and more.

Then schools began hosting them.

I learned 1 in 3 young people under the age of 18 deal with extreme anxiety.

I remembered my own relationship with feeling like a failure — subconsciously making it part of my identity.

I remembered the sign that’s hanging in our studio.

I was working on an entirely different book. I had pages and pages of character sketches, world design, and background layouts. The manuscript had already been through multiple revisions.

That book, though, would have to wait. It was time to failabrate.

My wife, Kristi, had the idea to make the Fail-A-Bration book out of real materials. The very process of making the book needed to reflect the spirit behind it. It needed to make us uncomfortable. It needed to be a little messy.

She took my sketches and re-created them out of items we’d previously thrown in the trash. It turned into something better than I could’ve ever dreamed.

Now, it’s a real book with a real release date.

Here’s the cover!!!

I can’t wait to share more.

We want there to be Fail-A-Bration parties happening in every state this September. If you’d like to throw one, you can find out more information here.

The book is available for pre-order now from your favorite bookseller. I can’t wait to see what all it inspires. May this be a party that inspires more and more parties. On and on and on and on.

I hope you fail better.

“Failure is success in progress.” - Albert Einstein

1. We hosted a special live event for schools this week. More than 500 classrooms took part in it. You can watch a replay of the entire thing for free here.

2. Pre-order the book anywhere books are sold: failabration.com

3. Your support of my work goes a long way. Whether it’s buying a book, hiring me to speak, becoming a paid subscriber, or sharing this email. I’m truly grateful you’re here.