I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
-Thomas Edison.
Well failure does hurt, doesn’t it?
When we fail, we feel as if our whole life has shattered. It hurts so much that we start questioning each and every aspect of our life. We get so demoralized that we give up at the same point. We feel ashamed of ourselves and think we are good for nothing.
Isn’t it right?
But we have so many examples in our society where people are very highly successful. And whenever they are questioned, how they achieved success, they start their story from the point of their failures. Why so?
That is because failure is a part of life. It is as important as is breathing. Is there is a single person who has never seen failure in life?
NO!
Do you know Walt Disney was told by his former editor that he lacked imagination and doesn’t have any good ideas. Can you believe it? A person who created all those cartoon shows was told that he lacked imagination!
J.K Rowling was broke, divorced, depressed and a single mother while she was writing the book “Harry Potter”. Her manuscript was rejected multiple times by many publishers and see where she is today. She is one of the richest writer in the world.
Do you know Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first job as a TV anchor and now she is a billionaire and has her own TV channel.
Take any field in life. Whether it is an exam, a job interview, a business that you started, your finances, relationships, any particular discovery and list go on and on. Everyone faced failure at some point in their life. Some people seem to fail in multiple fields as well.
What I feel is, failure makes us a much better and stronger person. Even when I failed in many fields of my life, every time I felt as if my life is done. It’s like everything seems darker and there is nowhere to go and nothing left to do. But on a longer run, I feel grateful that I failed. Because failure made me the person I am today. It gave me the strength to withstand anything that life throws in my path. It gave me the time to re-evaluate my flaws and seek out my interests.
Many times we pursue something in life because of pressure, or by emotional force or maybe at times we don’t even know what we want from life. Like, maybe you are pursuing a career or a field of study because your family wanted you to, or maybe you think it is a stable field to get settled in life or maybe you didn’t even know any better what other things you can do in life. So you continued with the thing and ended up failing.
And then you started asking, “Why me?”
“What did I do wrong?”
“Why everyone else got good marks but I couldn’t?”
“Why they got the promotion but I couldn’t?”
“Why did my relationship failed?”
“Why am I even doing this if all I get is disappointment?”
Believe me, everyone feels the same, but once you cross this particular barrier everything starts falling in perspective. Ask yourself, what happened back at the time? Are you really interested in that particular field or person? If not then maybe it’s time to start exploring what is best for you. You just need to boost up morally and power through it.
And if you are already following your passion and seem to fail at it even after giving your best efforts, then you need to re-evaluate your way of working. Like, start with the process or routine you follow and try to find out, at what point it went wrong. Seek for help who can guide you to rectify your mistakes. But giving up isn’t going to help you go where you want to reach.
It is very important to own our failures and accept the fact that we need to get better. Take full responsibility of your actions and be proud of yourself that at least your tried rather than sitting around doing nothing. No one is perfect! You might see people who are successful, bouncing on the path of fame and eating on a silver platter. But go and see their journey to where they are today, they have suffered a lot to achieve the life they are living today. They went through multiple failures to learn what they are best at doing at present date.
- Failure makes you more resilient in life. Once you recover from the internal turmoil you go through, you become much stronger person. You get the strength to face anything.
- You gain a lot of experience in the field. You learn what works and what doesn’t. You gain knowledge as well on a much deeper level.
- When you start to evaluate your process and re-map a better way of approach to it, you grow within you. You see everything from a fresh perspective.
- Failure teaches you the value of success. Maybe before you didn’t take it much seriously because you were overconfident. But once you fail at it, you understand your own desperation to achieve it.
- You realize that nothing is permanent. Failure or success, both are temporary in life.
- Failure makes you fearless. Well once you fail, your fear is already gone. You already know how it feels and suddenly you go for it without any concern of failing again.
- Failure keeps your ego in check. Since you have already faced it, you learn to appreciate other people’s struggle in life as well. You don’t diminish other people at their low point.
- Your mindset changes towards your life. You learn the real meaning of life.
All of these benefits only apply when you let go of the past but take the lessons from it and move forward. All the people out there who are feeling bad about themselves and are feeling depressed, please believe me your life has really started now. Be hopeful and believe in yourself because working hard and putting your best efforts never goes in vain.
Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.
-Napoleon Hill.
Hopefully you will start appreciating your life and start seeing the positive side of failure as well. Please like and follow my page to get the future updates from my website and please write your suggestions below in the comment section to help me improve my posts.
Thank You!
Have a great day ahead.
Sayonara!
Pratha Nayak