Everyone fears failure because experiencing it is one of the worst feelings in life – the feeling of being alone and lagging behind or the fact that your effort was not good enough and you didn’t make the cut.
Failure fills you with the worst emotions ever – the feeling of dejection and worthlessness and a voice in your head that constantly tells you that you can never be enough.
These emotions and feelings are among the reasons most people will do anything to avoid failure in life. Some people will even engage in illegal actions to avoid it. This is a really wrong approach to failure. While failing is not necessarily a good thing, there are always lessons to learn from every failure you encounter.
Thomas A Edison the light bulb inventor once said he failed 1000 times before successfully inventing the light bulb. When he was asked about his failures in an interview, he said “I haven’t failed, I have just found 10000 ways that won’t work.” Therefore in every failure you face, keep moving forward always. You will get it right. Did you experience failure recently? Don’t give up.
Here are some powerful lessons you can learn from failure.
1. Failure teaches that Success is not assured
As humans, when trying something new, be it starting a business, learning a new skill, applying for a dream job, or starting a new relationship, everyone wants to achieve success. Unfortunately, this desire for success can sometimes be limiting.
Take, for instance, a man who has always wanted to start his own business but never done it because he isn’t sure of achieving success. They get stuck with indecisiveness and keep waiting for the perfect time, which obviously would never come. Their desire for success actually holds them back from starting their business.
Now, there is another man who has taken action and experienced failure. He has come to an understanding that success is never guaranteed, as failure could happen due to factors outside man’s control.
Knowing there is always opportunity in failure helps you learn to not let the fear of failure hold you back. Having experienced failure, you are pushed towards your dreams. It teaches you to keep trying and trying until you get it right. This is what eventually births success.
2. Failure teaches that you can do better
Sometimes the most important lessons in life are learned from failure. One vital similarity you’ll always read in the success stories of average successful men is that they have had to fail multiple times in their climb to the top.
When you fall down and pick yourself back up, you build muscle and strength. Similarly, each time you fail at an act and you pick yourself back up, you’re building the strength of character, commitment, and work ethic. That act of failure triggers creativity, motivation, and tenacity. All of these lessons eventually build your level of confidence and self-esteem to attain success.
3. Failure points to you the need to try a new approach
Failure makes us realize we need to approach things differently. If one way didn’t work, trying a different, more creative approach might just be the breakthrough we need.
4. Failure increases creativity
You need to constantly put yourself in a position where you’re willing to try something new, and if you fail, you’re willing to try again, but this time, through another creative way. Creativity should be viewed as a journey that includes making, and correcting mistakes along the way to success.
What would a mobile phone company like Techno or Apple achieve if they waited until their phones were perfect? Obviously, not much! Instead, they launch their phones, glitches are discovered at a point, and they then continually push forward innovative technologies with each release. This is why they will never stop updating their devices. They are successful because they have the guts to keep failing, to keep trying new things, and to keep pushing technology forward.
5. Failure teaches you to be flexible and embrace change.
The experience from a failed project simply points us to the fact that sticking to just that single approach that didn’t work will keep birthing an unfavorable result. It quickly becomes apparent that you need to be a little more resilient, to bounce back from the failure and employ some flexibility in your next attempt.
What you are expected to do afterwards is to simply revise, adapt, and modify; that’s being flexible.
6. Failure natures you into a better person
In the first stages of a baby learning to walk, they fall down many times. This, in fact, is a failure. The baby might fall down many times, but they will surely walk.
Failure brings with it important firsthand knowledge. That knowledge can be harnessed in the future to overcome that very failure that inflicted so much pain in the first place. Nothing can replace the knowledge gained from failure.
When we fail, we grow and mature as human beings. This helps us to reflect and take things into perspective, developing meaning from painful situations to become a better version of ourselves.
7. Failure teaches humility and wisdom.
Failure comes with pain, and this births some traits of humility. If we remain bullheaded in our approach, with determination to prove ourselves right no matter the consequences, we will not only miss the humility learning experience but also, we will likely continue to experience failure without absorbing any of its other valuable lessons.
We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will work, by finding out what will not work. Probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
Indeed, failure is only a crossroad when one is on the road to success. Without failure, we as humans do not learn and our movement toward success is stagnated. Instead of it becoming a stopping point, Let failure guide you towards success.
