Life lessons
Chapter 18: Failure is normal
If you dare to accept failure and learn from it,
if you see failure as an opportunity to grow for you,
then believe that you are on the road to success.”- Joseph Sugarman
Everyone has experienced failure
Ask any successful person
if they’ve ever had a failure,
and your friends will get two answers.
The first sentence will be a thoughtful smile
or will be a loud laugh.
The second answer would be a question something like,
“Which failure of mine would you like to hear about?”.
Failure is an inevitable part of life that no one can avoid.
What matters is not whether we fail,
but how we fail.
The difference between successful people
and unsuccessful people is determined not by how many times
they fail but by what they do after those failures.
Two famous failure experiences
I started reading biographies of celebrities at the age of twelve.
Thanks to that,
I discovered that these are the best books on the subject of success.
What strikes me most is that
people write not only about success
but also about failures
because no one succeeds
without having tasted the bitterness of failure before.
Regarding the experience of failure,
I immediately think of two famous people,
Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison.
One is the greatest mathematician
and the other the greatest inventor of all time.
They will not succeed
if they are not willing to learn from failure
and persevere in the darkest of times.
Although not many people know,
their failures have contributed significantly to the success of their inventions.
When Edison tried to prolong the life of the light bulb,
he tried more than ten thousand times different combinations of materials
and still failed.
When asked how he could continue the experiment after a thousand failures,
he replied that he did not consider it a failure,
each time experimenting for him was each time
he got closer to success.
And Einstein,
who was famous for being wise,
said:
“I am constantly thinking and thinking.
Ninety-nine times give false results.
But for the hundredth time,
I’m right.”
For these people,
failure is normal.
And they know that success rarely comes on the first try.
With such a mindset,
we will quickly recover from our failures and try again.
Success is the result of time,
determination,
and persistent effort.
Both Edison and Einstein were considered geniuses,
but neither liked the title.
Edison himself defined:
“Genius is the result of one percent genius inspiration
and ninety-nine percent sweat and tears.”
What we can learn from failure
“People who refuse to learn are always repeating the same mistakes.
People who are willing to learn always accumulate experience
after failures happen.
The issue here is not whether you are willing to learn or not.” – Benjamin Barber
Failure is a great teacher of life.
Here are the best lessons from failure:
• Failure teaches us humility.
It forces us to face it with all our might to overcome it.
• Failure teaches us to regulate our thoughts and actions.
It pushes us to look at what we’re doing
and gives us the opportunity to experiment in a new direction.
• Failure teaches that we don’t always get what we want.
Sometimes,
even when we do all the right things,
we still don’t get the desired results.
• Failure teaches us about the power of character.
It challenges us to dig deeper into our inner resources
when faced with setbacks.
• Failure teaches us about perseverance.
It forces us either to give up
or to be more determined and to keep trying.
• Failure teaches that we can overcome failure,
not give up, not give up.
There is no shame in failing,
only shame in being afraid to get up and keep trying.
And there is another most valuable lesson,
that is:
Failure makes us stronger.
When I interviewed more than two hundred people,
most of them famous people
and also experienced many failures
to see how they cope with failure,
their answers helped me realize that
I was wrong to constantly torment himself about his mistakes in the past;
Instead,
I need to focus on learning from those mistakes.
For them,
failure is nothing to be ashamed of.
True strength comes from the realization that
we will grow stronger with each failure.
One of the interviewees was Dr. Keith Reemstma.
He is a surgeon who has been searching for a cure for diabetes
for many years.
But he has not yet succeeded.
What keeps you looking?
“I never thought what I was doing was a failure.”
– He said
– “Those are just results
just not perfect.
I always had a very clear picture of what
I was looking for and aiming for,
and each experiment told me a little bit more about what I was doing wrong.”
What a great attitude!
It instills in us a belief that we never fail.
Failure will give us the answer
When looking back at our failures,
the question “Will we fail again?”
It doesn’t make sense anymore
because we all inevitably fail at times.
When we look at the problem
with the question “How do I fail?”,
we will have two choices:
1. Why did you fail:
There are two common mistakes that lead us to failure.
The first is fearing it,
trying too hard to avoid it.
Because we’re so afraid of failure,
we try to put ourselves
in such a secure state that we never take any risks.
But in reality,
taking risks is both an important part of success
and a necessary condition for growth.
Marva Collins,
a famous Chicago schoolteacher who has helped thousands
of children overcome their fears,
once said,
“If you’ve never made a mistake,
you’ve never done anything meaningful.”
Take a risk and be a little brave.
Not taking the risk of failure is the worst of all failures.
The second mistake we often make is allowing failure to knock us down.
We get angry,
depressed,
frustrated,
depressed,
often give up and give up.
I am not saying these feelings are unreasonable or unrealistic.
There’s nothing wrong with having those feelings after a huge failure.
But we shouldn’t let those emotions destroy us,
let them help us test our resolve.
Thousands of years ago,
Confucius said,
“Our greatest glory is not in never failing,
but in getting up every time we fail.”
2. How to fix failure?
First, find someone you trust.
Confidential words will help you feel better;
find yourself not alone in the face of setbacks
and words of encouragement will give you the strength to stand up.
Second, write.
Write about what you have done,
how you feel now,
about your goals,
and about what you will do next.
You will be surprised what happens next.
Third, read books about people who overcame their own failures
to succeed like Lincoln, Edison,
Gandhi, Martin Luther King.
Their stories will light up in us glimmers of hope,
thoughts and a more optimistic outlook.
You will be stronger after overcoming failure
In his famous work A Farewell to Arms,
when talking about World War I,
Ernest Hemingway wrote:
“The world breaks people
and many people become strong in that place of ruins”.
Life is the same,
indeed life has been challenging people,
and often not just once.
But, accept defeat or become stronger,
it all depends on our attitude and choices.
We can become strong in that very broken place
if we choose to learn from our mistakes,
keep trying.
Painful failures in life can be the most valuable lessons learned
and the most powerful source of encouragement
to help rebuild our strength.
As General George S. Patton once said,
“Success is the height we jump to after hitting the bottom”.
“Don’t be afraid to fail.
Learn from failure and continue to face new challenges.
If you don’t fail,
you won’t be able to grow.” – H. Stanley Judd