Failure: The backdoor to success

Failure is one of the toughest parts of our life to overcome. When it comes to failing, our egos are our worst enemies. Everyone has seen or experienced failure at some point in their life. Nobody escapes it. Sooner or later, everyone experiences it. If someone gets hit by major setbacks in his or her life, people often misinterpret it as a breakdown. Always remember, failure is a staircase to success. You may fall from it, maybe a hundred times but make sure you climb up again. Some people never fail, because they never aim for success. Yes, some people are so focused on not failing that they forget to aim for success.

Failure is actually a very important part of our success. It isn’t really a problem anyway. The problem lies when we limit ourselves, and fail to learn from it. Always deal with the problems of your life with a positive attitude. Negative response leads to nothing but setbacks and blunders it may cause you to give up on your goals. Everyone deals with setbacks but they can be overcome only if we see them as a part of bigger life picture. Use failure as a valuable learning tool.

You can benefit from every failure, obstacle, or embarrassing experience by asking yourself the following questions:

• What did I learn from this experience?
• What can I do differently next time to avoid it?

Thomas Edison, whose most memorable invention was the light bulb, which purportedly took him 1000 tries before he developed a successful prototype. “How did it feel to fail 1000 times?” a reporter asked. “I didn’t fail 1000 times,” Edison responded. “The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.”

Fear of failure

Firstly, most of the people never succeed in life because of their fear of failing. Of course, no one wants to fail. We’d like to succeed every time. But we do learn more from our failure than we ever will from our successes. Rather than labeling your setbacks and blunders as failures, choose to say you have learned a lot of ways not to do something at the second attempt.

Secondly, some people never overcome their failure because they never forgive themselves for failing. Instead of moving beyond failure to success, they continue to punish themselves with self-inflicted guilt. If you have failed, admit it and start over afresh. The key to success is determining how you’ll handle your failure. If you try to hide it, it will haunt you. If you confess it, you can conquer it.

“Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the wrong direction.”

– Al Bernstein.

Use failure as a platform

Failure can be used as a platform – it can be used as a launching board towards something incredible. I remember a short story of a girl and an artist. One day some ink was, accidentally, spilled onto a beautiful and an expensive handkerchief by a girl during her painting classes and that mess was observed by her teacher-an artist who decided to make the best of the situation. So, he drew a picture on the cloth and used the blotch of ink as part of the scenery. At the end, something beautiful was made on a blundered product.

God is well-equipped to do the same for us, if we allow him to. Place your problems and failure in God’s hand, it’s never too late. Sometimes, we forget that god is a miracle worker. He is well able to take our failures and work them into his plans for our future. Above all, allow God to direct your paths. He will take care of everything.

“The righteous may fall seven times but still get up”

– Proverbs 24:16

Never give up

When we study life of some beautiful minds who have succeeded in their life, one quality they almost always have in common is “persistence”. They never give up. They know that the longer they hang in there and the more they persist, the greater the chance that something will happen in their favor. Never give up on your dreams. You may find it challenging but quite often the challenges you face will help you learn new lessons, get good at making difficult decisions, and develop your character.

Here is a small incident that happened with Thomas Edison – a well known scientist. Thomas Edison invented the microphone, the phonograph, the incandescent light, the storage battery, talking movies, and more than 1000 other things. December 1914, he had worked for 10 years on a storage battery which had greatly strained his finances. One particular evening, spontaneous combustion broken out in his film room and within minutes all the packing compounds, celluloid for records and film, and other flammable goods were in flames. Fire companies from eight surrounding towns arrived, but the heat was so intense and the water pressure so low that the attempt to douse the flames was futile. Everything was destroyed.

The damage exceeded two million dollars; the buildings were only insured for $238,000 because they were made of concrete and thought to be fireproof.

The inventor’s 24-year old son, Charles, searched frantically for his father. He finally found him, calmly watching the fire, his face glowing in the reflection, his white hair blowing in the wind. “My heart ached for him,” said Charles. “He was 67 – no longer a young man – and everything was going up in flames. When Edison saw him, he shouted, ‘Charles, Where’s your mother?’ Charles told him, “I didn’t know.” Edison said, ‘Find her and bring her here. She will never see anything like this as long as she lives.”

The next morning, Edison looked at the ruins and said, “There is a great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank god, we can start anew.” Three weeks after the fire, Edison managed to deliver the first phonograph.

Similarly, there are n numbers of notable individuals who have failed in life more times than they have succeeded. They never gave up over their works which brought them success in future.

Remember, our Holy Bible reminds us in Jeremiah 8:4 as, “when people fall down, do they not get up?” So, you may fall or you may fail but be bold. Rise up, Run.

You may be a student or a parent who is reading this. Whether you’ve experienced  failure as a parent, in the form of bankruptcy after starting your own business, or a student who has failed in exams, remember you did the best you could with the knowledge and skills you had available at the time. After all, you did survive. Now you know, you can cope up with the results of failing. To get yourself up and running once again, focus on past successes. Remind yourself you’ve had more victories than defeats. Try to spend time with positive, caring friends and family who can validate your worth and help you refocus on your goals.

Never let your failure break you, and the only way that failure can break you is if you let it. What you have to understand is that everybody fails but not everyone gets back up and tries again. So, no matter how many time you fail, get up and try it again. Never let the failure stand between you and what you want to accomplish. Once you’ve created a new plan of action, pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and move in the direction of your dreams. It was the comedian, George Burns who said, “I, honestly, think it is better to fail at something you love than to succeed at something you hate.”

Failure isn’t the end, it’s a new beginning!