When Smart People Fail: Rebuilding Yourself for Success

by Carole Hyatt, Linda Gottlieb

“A must for those who need to understand how setbacks can be made into stepping-stones to the top.”— Forbes
 
Lay-offs, cutbacks, company reorganizations, and bankruptcies are bringing millions of people face-to-face with unexpected, often devastating setbacks in their professional lives. If you are among them—or fear you may soon be—help is at hand in this book.
 
Everyone is afraid to fail. But when smart people fail, they convert their loss into renewed success. Drawing on their own experiences and those of hundreds of others, Carole Hyatt and Linda Gottlieb provide the practical, positive, reassuring advice you need for these trying times.
 
It’s not whether we fail, but how we cope with failure that truly matters. With the compassion and confidence of ultimate survivors, Linda Gottlieb and Carole Hyatt have given us the tools to rebound, regain control, and come back better than before.
 
“People will be helped more by reading this book than by anything else I can think of.”—Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People

Genres: Self Help, Psychology, Nonfiction, Personal Development

Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Matthew Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should read

[Loki · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting look at the ways we can recover and move on from our failures. The book is very career-focused, but it's easy enough to carry the ideas over to other parts of life. Longer on case studies than on lessons, but very good at using those case studies to illustrate the lessons, and very, very clear in its rejection of the kid of 'one size fits all' approach that a lot of similar books have - for instance, it pairs the story of a failed salaryman who needs to be an entrepreneur, with that of a failed entrepreneur who needs to security of corporate work, or contrasts someone who risks too much with someone who risks too little. At the end of the day, the book's advice can be boiled down to "don't be afraid to start over or try something new", but it makes the case with well-supported examples and a writerly eye that's long on both insight and compassion.

[Dee · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this up after several negative things had happened in my life--namely finding out I wasn't cut out for research (something I had prepared for my whole graduate career) and having a miscarriage. I have never cared for self help books, but I thought, "It couldn't hurt." I wish I'd spent my money on a good frappachino--it would have helped more. This book seemed to be only examples of others who had far worse problems than me, and the writing was boring to boot. If you need help, a good friend or counselor can do you more good than this drivel.

[Peyton Stafford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read in these difficult times when so many of us wonder whether we are succeeding or failing. The authors' chief insight is that even when one fails at something, that does not make oneself a failure per se, but rather one who has experienced an unwanted outcome. This made me think of the phrase that high tech people often use: fail forward fast. They look at failure as inevitable, as part of the experimental process that leads to success. So they welcome failure and try to get over it and move ahead as quickly as possible.

[Christina Mercado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Believe it or not, I found this book in a pile of free books on the sidewalk. When Smart People Fail is NOT a self-help book; rather it is a compilation of insights drawn from hundreds of interviews with successful people from different types of careers, who have encountered some sort of 'failure.' Great find - especially during this time of depressed economic activity, it is important for us all to reframe our minds and expand our definitions of 'success'.

[Suresh]

Yet to

[Bob Conder · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this book not for the stories of suffering but for the stories of success that came out of the adventure of failing. I even quote it regularly.

[Scott Cinsavich · Rating 4 out of 5]

A welcome anodyne when one's plan catastrophically fail.

[Elaine Gullotta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really good information but the version I read
was an original so the stories were very outdated (1970ish). I'm going to look for the updated version as I know many love this book.

[Adrienne · Rating 1 out of 5]

dividing the world into "learners" and "non-learners" since 1987.