Be A Failure To Find Success

Is it necessary to fail, to find success?

A failure, a loser, a nobody, or a disappointment, are words often associated with people who fail in public.

You might have often come across people who kick you when you are down, but more often than not you would notice that these are the same people who themselves have never truly succeeded in life.

Show me a man who has never failed, and I’ll see a man who has never attempted anything.

Failure Is An Opportunity

Being from India, a country of a billion where everyone is competing with one another I have often observed how failure is often looked down upon. From schools to universities, everyone slogs for hours, studying to ensure they score well in their exams, or at least not fail. Nobody wants to learn but ensure they reach the finish line.

I am not saying you should strive to fail, just that you should not fear failing. Failure should be considered an opportunity to re-evaluate the process of learning, fill the gaps in your knowledge, and be through only once you have learned something new.

Failure Teaches You More

Think back to all the mistakes you have made in your life, the so-called failures, have those failures taught you more in life or the successes?

I think success can make you complacent, it is more likely for you to remember less of what you barely succeeded in than what you failed in.

When I used to work in an IT firm in India as a developer and had freshers train under me, I used to love answering their queries.

In most cases, I knew the answers to the questions they asked not because of how thoroughly I studied the subject matter, but because most of their questions were related to the mistakes I had made as a fresher. It took me longer to find solutions to new problems. In their mistakes, I found opportunities to learn something new.

Failure Is the First Step To Success

When I took my driving test in the US, I failed twice before finally clearing it.

Was I sad when I failed? Of course, I was, but when I thought about it the sadness had more to do with what others would think about me, not the failure itself.

During the first two tests, I failed to do something I had no idea about, if I had not been made aware of those mistakes while under supervision, the same without supervision could have been deadly for me. Each of the two failures helped me understand my driving better than before and potentially saved me from future pain.

Every time you fail you learn how not to approach something.

I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.

Thomas Alva Edison

There is no better example in history of this than Edison. He is said to have failed hundreds of times in life before being a success. Every failure was another step towards success.

How To Fail More?

When I say you should fail more I don’t mean purposefully make mistakes and fail often, what I actually mean is to allow yourself to fail.

Failures are not permanent, but what they teach you is.

When I failed my driving test I was sad for a couple of months. But I tried again and I cleared it eventually. It made more sense to try again and fail rather than not try at all. This is true in everything in life, You should keep trying to get what you want, every failure will teach you how to approach the task differently.

Every failure is a teaching to chart the course of your further actions. It might even help you realize what you failed in is genuinely not your cup of tea, and you should look at other avenues.

The secret to success is to fail more, and the secret to failing more is to try more.

It’s better to have tried and failed than to have never tried.

Conclusion

So go ahead, and write the blog that you have been procrastinating about.

Start that business venture you have been planning for the past few years.

Reach out to your boss asking for that raise you deserve so much.

Even the worst that can happen will teach you how to proceed in life.

Every failure is truly a success since even a failure successfully teaches you how not to do something.

It is not failure, but low aim that is the crime. In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail.

Bruce Lee

So go ahead and fail, since you will have more to share than one who has never tried.

---