What is Failure?
It is simply a word used to describe the situation when we did not receive the result we want. I was that one of those people who was trying to go through life trying to avoid failure as much as possible until recently I realised that failure is inevitable and imperative. Everyone fails in life at one point or other, especially when you pursue something out of your comfort zone. I have failed in many things in life, from small failures like failing my driving test to big ones like failing my first business ventures in 2006. I was completely shattered and lost total confidence in myself and worst of all fear of failure consumed me!
Psychologist Martin Seligman explained that there are three ways in which our internal beliefs or narratives become damaging.
- By making the failure personal: i.e. “I failed, so I must be a failure”.
- By taking it Pervasive: “i.e. I failed in this instance, so I’ll probably fail in every instance”.
- By making it feel that it is Permanent: i.e. “I failed once, so I’ll probably fail always”.
Of course, each of these three narratives is a lie, but at that moment of failure it feels very true. And believe me I went through all of the three at one point of my life when I failed my first business.
I thought that success is all about having that one opportunity, But I was wrong! Because Failure was there to stop me. In fact, I realised that failures were not actually there to stop me, but they are there to grow me. My failures were a sign of showing me where I went wrong. It not only showed me that I failed in my business due to lack of research on setting my target audience, poor estimation and planning. It helped me to identify my weaknesses and pointed me to focus on them so I made the required adjustment to get the right result when I hit the ground again in 2014. That’s why they say that there is no success without failure!.
So the good news is – It’s OK to fail!. But what is not ok is being afraid of failing at something that you decide not to try it at all.
Key Lessons we learn from our failures:
It is only through the failure we learn some of the most valuable lessons that sometimes success forgets to show or teach us.
- Failures are the moments which help you to discover who your real friends are!
- Failures help you to learn where and how you went wrong and discover your weaknesses!
- It is during these moments you discover how strong as a person you are!
- It is this period which tests how passionate you are about your ideas and your mission.
Famous Failures:
A newspaper editor once fired Walt Disney because Disney lacked creativity and imagination. But that did not put him off; he continued despite those failures. Today here is the man responsible for an empire of imaginative movies and play for children around the world.
Henry Ford’s first two companies failed. The first one went bankrupt. And the second one ending up in a big dispute. But it was his third try that really sealed the deal.
Failure does not mean that you are not good enough, it merely says that you must do better, you must switch your mindset, think and revive your approach. Once you start seeing failure as feedback to improving yourself, then you become unstoppable, and your success will be inevitable. As Charles Darwin rightly quotes “It’s not the strongest but the most adaptable that survive.”
What can be the best teacher than failure?. If you do not fail in any of your endeavours, how do you learn to be better? Remember, often valuable insights come only after a failure. Accepting and learning from those insights is the key to succeeding in life because success is not a onetime thing; it takes huge efforts, persistence, commitment and failures!.
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