A few years ago, I co-wrote a grant to fund a pilot program that would offer digital media design services to small start-ups in Connecticut. 

It was an ambitious project, more partners than I’d managed before, competing visions for what the program should look like, and more moving pieces than I could comfortably hold together – including renting a physical storefront. 

On top of that, it was one of the busiest periods of my life, both personally and professionally. 

I won’t go into all the details, as that’s in the book, but the short version is this: what was a highly creative endeavor that should have produced a new and highly valued outcome for the community, fell well short of what many people had hoped it would achieve. 

And at the end of it, I received a polite but pointed email from one of the main funders, copied to colleagues across the university, expressing disappointment in the program. 

In my response, I could have blamed covid, afterall we started in May 2020, I also could have blamed others, or the challenges we faced with logistics, but I didn’t, I took responsibility, as I should of, offering no excuses, because deep down I knew I had fallen short, and so I had to suck up the failure and move on professionally. 

But privately? Personally. I felt terrible. Not for a day or two. For that entire summer and into the new year. In fact, even now after five years I can still get frustrated with myself if I think too much about specific events that I know I should have, and could have addressed. 

And those feelings — embarrassment, shame, anger at myself, frustration toward some colleagues, it all made me disconnect to some extent from wanting to engage in similar projects

in the future. 

Welcome to episode nine of this summer series, which brings us to the ninth of the ten actions for fueling creativity in education: Face the Feelings. 

WHAT “FACE THE FEELINGS” ACTUALLY MEANS 

Every creative endeavor carries the possibility of failure. And the bigger the possible outcome, the bigger the possible impact of that failure. 

The possibility of failure isn’t a flaw in the process — it’s an inevitable feature of it. You can’t do something genuinely new and worthwhile without removing and accepting the possibility that it might not work. 

However, while we talk a lot about failure as a process, we don’t talk as much about how it makes us feel, and how we ultimately influence the choices we make both during that process and in the future. 

Think about a student who presents an idea to their class that is laughed at or quickly shot down. 

Or a teacher who tries a new instructional approach and it falls flat in front of an administrator who was conducting an observation. 

What about a professional who puts everything into a project, sure it is going to be loved by the client, but then finds that they didn’t like it. 

In each of those moments, there’s more happening than not achieving an expected outcome. There’s embarrassment, and a massive hit to the ego that can encourage us to play it safer next time, as a way to protect that hit the ego in the future. 

Research supports what many of us already know about this experience — that repeated experiences of failure, especially public ones, can make us more risk-averse over time. Not because we’ve lost the ability to be creative, but because the emotional cost of failing starts to feel higher than the potential reward of trying, especially when the consider real world projects that expand beyond our immediate environment. 

This is why creativity and emotion are so closely linked. The emotional highs of a creative breakthrough and the emotional lows of a creative failure are both part of the same journey. And if we only prepare students — and ourselves — for the intellectual side of that journey, we’re leaving out the part that actually determines whether someone continues to strive for higher levels of creativity with huge impacts, or quietly steps back, dials it down, and plays it safe.

The goal isn’t to eliminate those feelings. That would be impossible. The goal instead is to face them, and dear I say, embrace them. 

Because the difference between someone who grows from a failure and someone who retreats from it often isn’t talent, or experience, or even determination. 

It’s whether they’ve developed the capacity to face whatever feelings emerge from the effort. 

THE HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT 

So here’s something to sit with this week — not an assignment, just a couple of questions. 

Think about a time when something you tried didn’t go the way you hoped — a lesson, a project, a conversation, anything. Not a small inconvenience. Something that genuinely stung. 

What did you do with that feeling? Did you sit with it, or did you move past it as quickly as possible? 

And here’s the second question: did that experience change what you were willing to try afterward? Did you take a similar risk again, or did you find yourself quietly steering away from it? 

You don’t need to share any of this with anyone right now. Just notice it. Because the awareness of how failure shapes our next move is exactly where facing the feelings begins. 

And to steal a suggestion from the book My Favorite Failure, 

When the next opportunity arises — share that story with your students. Not the polished version. Not “failure is part of the process.” The real one. The one where you felt terrible, and weren’t sure you wanted to try again. 

In this chapter of our book, we go much deeper into the relationship between emotion and creativity — including the difference between a mistake and a failure, why some people bounce back faster than others, and how to design learning experiences that help students navigate the emotional side of creative work, not just the intellectual side. 

Creativity asks us to try things that might not work. And when they don’t, the feelings that follow are real — embarrassment, frustration, self-doubt. We don’t think the answer is to push past those feelings or pretend they aren’t there. We think the answer is to face them. Because feeling

bad when something doesn’t work out isn’t a sign that you’re not good enough, or not creative enough. It’s a sign that you cared enough to try. 

Matthew: We hope you enjoyed this episode of our Summer 2026 Listen and Learn series. And don’t forget your letter for this week, it’s E. 

Cyndi: Write it down, hold onto it, and keep collecting because you’ll need all ten to unscramble the secret phrase and enter to win a signed copy of The Future Creative. You can submit your entry at FuelingCreativityPodcast.com/summerreading2026, and that’s also where you’ll find more information about the book, including where to pre-order it. 

Matthew: We are still booking guests for Season 13 of the podcast, so if you have ideas for researchers or practitioners you’d love to hear from, or topics you want us to dig into, please reach out at ideas@fuelingcreativitypodcast.com. 

Cyndi: Stay curious, keep that door open, and I will see you right back here next week. Matthew: Thanks for listening to Fueling Creativity in Education.