The Importance of Failure
Failure sucks. Nobody enjoys failing at anything, especially when you have put your heart and soul into it. Yet failing is absolutely critical if you are going to achieve anything of significance in your life.
Life is hard, but the crazy thing is that the more you fail, the easier it gets. But how can this be possible?
Failure allows you to learn
Failure is the best teacher. If you continuously succeed you will actually begin testing how poor of a job you can do and still succeed. You will begin to slack off. But when you fail, if you take time to discover why you failed, you will be able to see an area for growth. At the same time, you will have an increased hunger for success because you will want to get that taste of failure out of your mouth.
This is true in all areas of our life. If you are in a committed relationship but it doesn’t work out, it failed and it sucks, trust me, but that can also be a great opportunity for you to learn about yourself as a man. What did you do wrong, what could you have done better, why didn’t things work out, were they good reasons or bad? You can also learn from all of the things that went right while it was going on. What things should you remember and continue to do in the future?
All of this information will go a long way to helping you learn more about yourself and how to become the best version of yourself.
As humans we are blind to our weaknesses. We tend to overcompensate and focus on the good aspects of ourselves. This is healthy and necessary for us to be able to move through life and be happy, but occasionally we need to have a light shined on our weaknesses.
We need to have the parts of ourselves that are lacking exposed, so we know what needs to be addressed if we are to become well-rounded individuals.
But failure doesn’t just teach us about our weaknesses, failure is also crucial in our areas of strength. Without failure there can’t be growth. If you aren’t failing then you aren’t pushing the envelope, which means you aren’t trying, and as a result you aren’t getting better.
If you are trying to learn a new trick on the wakeboard, or skiing, or skateboarding or whatever, if you only stick to the moves you know and never trying anything new, then sure you can get really good at those handful of moves, but you wont ever learn anything new.
It is when you begin trying those tricks that are just barely beyond your ability, and you crash and have to get back up again, that you learn. You learn about yourself, how motivated you are, how bad you want it, and you learn what to do in order to prevent that from happening again.
No matter how much you fail it is always going to be uncomfortable, but there is a way that you can decrease the pain associated with failure.
Shifting your mindset when it comes to failure
The best way to ease the pain of failure is to shift your mindset when it comes to failure.
Many people view failure as if it is the end of the world. They don’t get into the college they want, they fail a test, they get fired. Instead, if you view failure as an opportunity to learn and grow it will take some of the sting out of it.
It won’t make failure fun, but it will make it bearable.
Sara Blakely, a self-made billionaire, tells a story about how every week at dinner her father would ask her and her siblings what they had failed at that week. He would celebrate when they told him they failed at something, and he would be disappointed when they said they hadn’t failed at anything.
Because of this exercise, he instilled in his children the fact that failure is a good thing, as long as you learn something from it. Sara said that it took the fear out of failure for her, which in turn allowed her to try new things without the fear of failure holding her back.
This is a mindset that we would all be wise to adopt. Instead of criticizing yourself the next time you fail, evaluate what happened, look for something you can learn, and then be happy about the fact that you are now better and going to use what you have learned to increase your chases of success in the future.
It is also important to keep in mind that everyone fails. Don’t think that you are alone when you fail on a project or a test, or you can’t seem to land that trick. Everyone who has ever been successful has been where you are, they have felt the same pain, the key is that the pushed through and didn’t dwell on it.
Anything worth achieving in life is going to be difficult, and as a result you will fail on the path to pursing it. Just because you fail doesn’t mean that you aren’t cut out for it, or that it isn’t right for you, everyone has gone through failure, but again, the successful people are the ones who continued to persist.
So remember, Failure = A Learning Opportunity. If you take advantage of the opportunity then you will move down the path. So shift your mindset, don’t fear failure, learn something from it, and then be happy that you are now wiser than you were before. Good luck.