People often victimize themselves whenever they feel that they have failed at something. Some people take it so hard that they become dejected and depressed because of it. This perception of failure always does way more damage than mending and nothing is usually learned from it. This is a total waste in my view.
The goal of this article is to help you view failure for what it really is and to understand how imperative it is to your personal growth and success.
First of all Failure is an event, never a person. It is a part of life; something that occurs when you don’t quite hit the mark you aimed at. There are degrees of failure; however, in the end failure only serves one important purpose – to teach.
It is through our failures that we learn the most about how to succeed. When you fail at anything, your greatest opportunity is to find the lesson in the failure. It’s time to start asking the right questions; what could I have done differently? Why didn’t it work the way I expected?
The hard part of this is that many people, and I have mentored some through the process, do not think of failure as an occurrence but more as a personal defect. Most people usually internalize these disappointments causing them to be blind to the valuable lessons. In this vein, they learn nothing and then wonder why the same thing keeps happening over and over again.
If you learn nothing from your failures, how will you know what not to do the next time you try? How will you know what to do better?
If you think of failure as an event, you can be more objective and pragmatic in your response to it. You will be able to look for clues as to what may have impeded your success. If you do not internalize it as a personal letdown but think of it more as a lesson to help you grow, you will be able to make improvements much more quickly.
I don’t think that there has ever been any truly successful person in history that did not known failure. In fact, many successful people will tell you that it was in their failures that they found their greatest and most innovative ideas. For some, it was fun to try and top the last failure every single time.
The point is that to know true success and achieve at a high level, you must get to know failure. This is how we learn and grow. When failure becomes an event in your life and nothing more, the knowledge you will receive will be invaluable.
You are not a failure; although your actions and your performance may have caused you to fail at something, it’s still just an event. Even when you fail yourself by not trying as hard as you can and doing your best, you are not the failure – your actions are.
Think of it this way… if you were a failure, how could you
change? If you are this thing which means malfunction, stoppage, breakdown and
collapse, how would you change these things? You see although all of these
things can occur, they can never be you because you have the ability and the
choice to change. This is why Failure is an event, never a person.
As far as your personal growth and development, failure is imperative in improving this in your life. Failing means that you are trying and trying means that you are active and if you are learning in the process, success is sure to follow. It doesn’t matter how many times you fail as long as you learn from it each time and then pick yourself back up for another round.
Let me give you an example from my own experience.
I started this blog in April 2009 and from day 1 I decided not to spend any money on marketing. That means that I have had to find other strategic ways to get the word out about my blog. That being said, I still have not yet found the right grove as of the writing of this article (December 2009); however, I learn from each avenue I try. I learn what works and what doesn’t.
Each and every single time I’ve failed to hit the mark with my goals for this blog, I learn something. It keeps me grounded and focused; I’ve also had my reality checked a few times from having lofty expectations. The point is that I certainly don’t internalize any of these hard knocks as a personal letdown. I know what my goals are and what I want to achieve with this blog and therefore everything I do is to learn more and more about the right and the wrong things to do to make that happen.
As of November 2009, even though I haven’t found the right grove yet for my marketing strategy, my articles generally rank in the top 20 or top 30 on Google for my article keywords. It took 7 months of tinkling and tweaking to get to that point; a lot of trial and error; however, I have learned so much. Most importantly, I really had fun.
In the next 7 months, I’m looking forward to being in the top 10.
If you think of yourself as a failure, then everything else about you will also fail. Your attitude, your work ethics and your confidence – these will also fail. If you’re still wondering why you almost never win, start examining the way you think of yourself.
Just remember that each time you fail, that is the universe’s way of telling you it’s time for school. There are reasons why we fail and only in the event of that failure can you truly discover how to succeed in your goal. Just because you failed does not mean that you are a failure – it means that you can learn, grow and try again. Failures do not detract from who you are but instead take you one step closer to your ultimate goal.
Failure Is an Event, Never a Person.
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