Failure hurts. Failure can break dreams. Failure can result in disillusionment, depression and a feeling of uselessness. But hold on a moment; there is another side of failure that is important. Failure is the best teacher. Failure is the sculptor that polishes the sculpture of your life. Truth be told, there is no failure in life; there are only lessons to make your dream better than the way you were carrying it out.
If anything, failure leads us to self-discovery of our potential. Orison Swett Marden weighs in: “A great many people never really discover themselves until they ruin stares in the face.
They do not seem to know how to bring out their reserves until they are overtaken by an overwhelming disaster, or until the sight of their blighted prospects and of the wreck of their homes and happiness stirs them to the very centre of their beings.”
When things are fine, your real character does not blossom. The real test of the character of a man or woman is what he or she does after he or she fails. Two people can fail an examination. One decides to call it quits. The other sits the next exam, gets selected to a college and pursues the academic dream of his or her life. It is not failure that dictates your destiny; it is your response to failure that dictates your destiny.
If you do not fail in life, it means you are playing the comfort game; you are not trying anything new; you are moving with the bandwagon at its speed. People that are failing are those who are not satisfied with the status quo. They try one thing, fail, learn from it, polish how best to do it again. They do not give up until their experimentation with life leads to fruition. They have the insatiable appetite for continued improvement until they become successful.
Maybe the past has left you with deep disappointment. You might feel as though you have been slogging along in mediocrity after reviewing it. It’s possible that you didn’t achieve the specific results you were hoping for, or that you lost close friends and family members. Because of your incapacity to pay your mortgage on your business or because of a sickness that prevented you from working, you might have lost your business and even your home. You have absolutely no hope, not even in your current situation. The truth is that, in spite of all of the setbacks you have experienced, if you don’t give up, triumph is waiting for you down the road.
When we are knocked down by failure and we throw in the towel, we disable our ability to move forward. Failure causes pain. Failure makes you look like a failure. But it is not how other people judge your failure that matters the most; it is how you rebound from that failure that matters the most.
When you fail, remember this. After being cut from his high school basketball team. Michael Jordan went home, locked himself in his room and cried. The failure inspired him. He ended up being six-time NBA champion, five-time NBA Most Valuable Person and four-time NBA all star.
When you fail, remember this, Oprah Winfrey was demoted from her job as a news anchor because she ‘wasn’t fit for television.’ Inspired by that failure, she proved the world wrong. She became the host of the popular multi-award winning talk show and the most influential woman in the world.
When you fail, remember this. At the age of 11, Lionel Messi was cut from his team after being diagnosed with a growth deficiency hormone, which made him smaller in stature than most kids his age. Failure inspired him and now Lionel Messi is the celebrated seven-time Fifa World Player of the Year
Through failure, many people have re-worked on their lives, moved on and became great in life. Through failure, many business enterprises have been born. Through failure, others have developed thick skin to survive the challenges of life. They have been resilient in the struggle for success.
