At first, glance trying to find success in failure seems to be an oxymoron, but failure can give people valuable insight into their lives. It’s human nature to want to succeed in everything we do. Success is what motivates and drives every single one of us to strive to try and be the best. It’s natural to think that if we put our best foot forward and make an honest attempt at whatever we wish to accomplish, success will follow.
However, that’s very seldom the case. Often, we are going to fail more times than we are going to succeed. Believing we will never fail is a hopeful fantasy spoon-fed to us at an early age that failure only happens to certain people, never to us. We are told that we can be whatever we want to be when we grow up and do whatever our heart desires.
Unfortunately, that’s not reality. Failure is a regulating force that will hit us like a brick wall if we don’t know how to deal with it. As heartbreaking as failure is, it can be a humbling experience. Failure can teach us something significant to learn and help direct us where our true path awaits.
Learn from Failure
Failure is one of those things that will constantly happen in life, and guess what? It’s normal. It’s what makes us infallible human beings. It will happen again and again, but what separates successful people from people who are not considered successful is the willingness to learn from failure.
Anyone who has failed would agree that it’s easy to shun failure and act out in a prideful manner defending our fragile egos. As human beings who strive for success. We must set aside our ego and recognize that the emotion that comes with failure is there to protect us from the harsh truth we don’t want to hear. But that type of shield prohibits us from the growth necessary to succeed in our next venture. We must be open to feedback on how we failed for us to learn.
Did we lack in:
- Education
- Preparation
- Drive
- Motivation and dedication
We must understand what the cause of our failure was, to begin with, because if we don’t, we are setting ourselves up for failure in our next venture. Failure is an important lesson to take. It can teach us things in our most vulnerable state and how to be successful next time. The only thing you must do is be open to that harsh lesson. But that’s what separates successful people from unsuccessful people.
Be Open to Failure
Being open to failure doesn’t mean that we should strive to fail but failure can be a great indicator for us to know whether we are on the right path in our lives. However, there are two schools of thought regarding being open to failure, and both are positive positions to take If someone has experienced a failure.
Taking a Leap of Faith
When people take a leap of faith to start focusing on their passion, they do so by this insufferable feeling that they must make a change in life. However, taking these leaps of faith might feel like a divine calling. Still, that type of action is hardly done with experience or planning.
Sometimes for us to have the courage to act on our passion, we have to get in there and do it. There is nothing wrong with taking these leaps of faith. It’s an effective strategy to start doing something you love, but you must get comfortable with failure. The trial-and-error approach will have its ups and downs.
Knowing When to Quit
When something is truly not working after our best foot forward, we must reevaluate our priorities within failure. A lot of times failure will tell us the cold truth about our path in life.
People will mistakenly have this never give up attitude, which is irrational. However, never giving up on something not working is stealing ambition and passion from something else that deserves your time and energy.
Not Letting Failure Define You
The ability to not let our failures define us is essential in anything we do because failure will happen often. Failure will occur more times than successes unless you are a lucky anomaly. Not letting failure define who you are is a powerful statement to yourself and the world around you. Which can bring positive energy and confidence in anything you do, even if you fail.
Taking Responsibility
Not letting failure define you enables you to take responsibility for your actions. Once you take control of your narrative and how you want to progress in life, the sky is the limit to what you can do. Yes, mistakes will happen along the way, but acknowledging and learning from them will get you moving forward faster toward the end goal.
Taking responsibility and understanding mistakes that will occur along the way will help make your navigation to success easier. Responsibility enables you to make calculated well-thought-out risks in life. Taking risks is a scary thing to do in life, but taking responsibility for one’s actions will keep you honest in your attempt to succeed.
Learning how to Ask for Help
A depressing reality of life is that we are all born alone and will die alone. It’s a grotesque black-and-white picture of our existence. But one thing that is overlooked is that between the black and white reality, there is a lot of gray, which symbolizes our life. One way to colorize the gray is to ask for help in things that matter. If we genuinely want to succeed in anything we do, we must be open about our desires.
That means we will have to become vulnerable to people we love, respect, and cherish. But for some reason, when it comes to being passionate about something and taking that leap of faith to focus on that passion, we fear our family and friends the most. We fear their ridicule, we fear their disapproval, and worst of all, we fear their rejection. After all, the people who should be there through thick or thin should support us.
Regardless of what they should and shouldn’t do, learning to ask for help is essential to success. Anyone who has garnered success has people around them to help facilitate their talents. It’s impossible to find success doing things on your own. It doesn’t matter how much you love something. Going headfirst alone is the quickest way to fail.
Conclusion
Failure can be a great teacher in our life, but one thing we must do for failure to have a positive effect is to understand where we went wrong. We will have to do a bit of soul searching to find what went wrong, but if we can be honest with ourselves, failure can be a valuable lesson.
However, if we keep failing and adjusting our approach, we sometimes have to be willing to let things go and find something that works for us. There is no shame in quitting anything that doesn’t bring us joy or happiness. Constantly failing will only bring resentment and make you bitter for your next journey to your passion.
Failing is a normal thing in life. It’s sometimes difficult to accept, but it must be acknowledged. Just understand that failing doesn’t have to be a negative experience. It can be very positive, so long as you make the most of every experience.