Everyone fails. It’s a fact of life. No one is perfect. We all want to succeed. We like the feeling that comes with success and we want the rewards that come from success. But everyone fails at one time or another. So how should failure be handled when it happens?
I think our current perspective on failure needs to change. I think it would help more people not to fail if we looked at failure differently. With that in mind here are a couple of thoughts I try to remember when it comes to my own failures:
Most people think failing is failure but failing to try is the real failure.
When you get old and look back over you life how do you want to feel? If you aren’t careful you could be disappointed about the opportunities you missed because you didn’t want to fail. So what if you fail? If you lose what have you really lost? And if you succeed what do you stand to gain? Once you are no longer afraid of failure it no longer has any power to stop you. So try. At very least you will have a story to tell your grandchildren.
And what’s the worst that could happen? You fail?
[Tweet theme=”tweet-box-normal-blue”]I think it would be far better to look back at my life & admit I failed than to have to admit I was too afraid to try[/Tweet]
This leads right into the next point…
Failure is nothing more or less than a learning experience.
If I ask you to pick a number between 1-100 and you guess incorrectly 25 times you have two choices about how you look at it. You can get discouraged because you’ve just wasted 25 guesses on wrong answers. Or you can do the math and realize that you have eliminated 25 answers that were not correct and now you have a 1 in 75 chance of guessing the correct number on your next attempt.
That is the attitude you should take when looking at your failures in life. Did you learn a lesson? Did you figure out something you shouldn’t do again? Did you find out a way that doesn’t work? Good. Pick yourself up and try again.
Which leads to the last point…
It isn’t failure that counts but it’s quitting that is the actual failure.
In failure you learn something. You become wiser and tougher and stronger. But quitting is final. Once you quit you have actually failed. You fail to learn more. You fail to get tougher. And the only thing that gets stronger is your habit of quitting. On the other hand, each time you try again you gain a little more strength to try again the next time. And if you keep trying eventually you will succeed. It’s only a matter of time.
I think if more of us could change our perspective on failure then less of us would end up as failures. If we could only lose our fear of it then it would lose its power over us. Just think of the great things you could accomplish if you weren’t afraid of failing.
Final Thought: [Tweet theme=”tweet-box-normal-blue”]What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? How would you act if you knew you wouldn’t fail?[/Tweet]
