The word “failure” for all intents and purposes is a negative word. It means lack of success, nonfulfillment, defeat, collapse, the omission of required action, negligence, oversight. Who in their right mind would ever want to admit that anything they’ve done was a failure? Surprisingly, some of the greatest minds in the world take great pride in talking about their failures.
You’ve likely read quotes from the greats like Thomas Edison “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” or Theodore Roosevelt “He who makes no mistakes makes no progress” and George Bernard Shaw “A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing”.
Just because you have failed doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Just like dancing the Macarena doesn’t mean that you’re a dancer and belting a Whitney Houston song in the shower doesn’t make you a professional singer. Failure isn’t a label unless you let it be one.
Without failure we would not know what really works. Without failure we could not move on. Without failure we wouldn’t be able to grow stronger and more focused.
Take Thomas Edison for instance. Imagine that he never failed and his first try at inventing the lightbulb was a success. Then one day someone who purchased one of his lightbulbs comes into his shop and says “Tom, this thing ain’t working. Can you fix it?” Thomas answers “No, I can’t. I don’t really know how to fix these things because they were so easy to make in the first place. I don’t know why they stop working.”
But Thomas Edison’s failures (all 10,000 of them) likely came in handy on a daily basis. If an invention stopped working properly, because he knew it inside and out, he’d know how to fix it in an instant. That’s what failure does. It gives you a manual on how to navigate the road ahead.
Without failures there would be no successes- at least, not in the truest definition of success. How successful do you think Thomas Edison would have felt if he could invent the lightbulb, but he couldn’t fix one? He’d feel like a sham.
Success and failure complement each other. Think of them as the yin and yang of life. One makes you stronger in order to face the other.
To be successful, you have to encounter failure. It is the secret to success.
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