Brian Kim has just posted an excellent article about his Different Way of Looking At Failure. It resonates with some of my thoughts so much, that I decided to make my comments on this a separate post.
I’ve always been a believer that failures make you stronger. I take them as a natural part of my life, and also a crucial part of my personal and professional development. It’s a part of the game you can’t play without. You have virtually no chance to be successful in anything without failing at some stage along your way.
At the same time, the more I talk to people, the more I realize how lucky I am to have such a natural positive look on failures. Most people don’t have it, and it’s rather hard for them to even accept my point of view, let alone to learn the approach and start using it in their lives. So I think that we all can only welcome posts like Brian’s, cause they give us additional understanding of what happens when we fail, and gives us the motivation we need to keep trying until we succeed.
Most failures are rarely irreversible. If you fail once, you’re likely to get another chance to try again later, and its your willingness to give it another go that determines your chances for a success. If you feel too depressed about failing and never find the courage to try again, you may never notice how much you’ve benefited and grown from your failure:
…you will experience pain after you hit failure, but if you rest and feed yourself with more information, knowledge, experience, and ideas, the next time you go at it again, you’ll realize you are stronger than before because of it. It’s that time from the moment you fail to the next time you tackle your goal that makes you stronger than before, provided that you intend to go at it again. If you don’t, you’ll never realize that you were stronger than before and you’ll never start hitting that favorable cycle.
In one of my earlier posts, Quick Recovery, I’ve already given you my advice on failures:
Accept it – everyone fails, and not always it’s due to the personal qualities and features. Quite often there is absolutely nothing you could do. There is nothing anybody could do. So all you do in such situations is to accept this and think one step forward – what needs to be done next to make up for the opportunity you’ve just lost.
I notice now that so far I’ve only spoken of failures as something that happens everyday, perhaps because I’m so used to the idea. But Brian talks about your first failure, which is always the most painful one. That’s an excellent angle, and I’ll definitely write on this topic someday myself.
Your first failure will hurt. Big time. It’ll likely happen during the beginning of your journey, at that long stretch of plateau before you go to the next level. However the moment you experience that failure, the MOMENT you experience that failure, you are stronger than before. It’s only when you go to tackle your goal again that you truly begin to realize it.
You should definitely go and read the whole post yourself, I’m sure you’ll find it useful: Different Way of Looking At Failure.