Before I begin, let me ask you this: has failure ever led you to give up on something? If your answer is in the affirmative, then hear me out. Failure may be disheartening at that very moment, it may even make you feel defeated, up to a point that you may think it’s useless to keep trying.

There’s nothing wrong with failing, it’s a part of life. The real problem arises if one yields to all the dispiriting obstacles life throws at them.

Failure helps people grow and learn from their mistakes, so they may not be repeated in the future. Everyone has faults, no one is perfect and so chances are that failure is a part of everyone’s life. If you fail, do not despair, continue to try and try harder while learning from your mistakes. Resultantly, as each time you fail again, you would be fixing your flaws and will eventually succeed.

Failure allows a person to acknowledge and take responsibility for their actions. It helps a person embrace their imperfections and find ways to correct them. It is true that in some unforgiving cultures, failure isn’t welcomed and one may be taunted on their road to success. So if at any point in time, someone says something hurtful to you, just remember that they’re jealous of you. In such cases, the best thing to do is to ignore them. The following quote can help explain this better.

“Never hate people who are jealous of you, but respect their jealousy. They’re people who think you’re better than them.”— Anonymous

Failure does not mean you are not good enough, or unable to perform or do a certain task, it just means that you have not found the correct method yet. It is the common “fear of failure” in certain people that causes them to hold back or not work up to their full potential because they are so scared of being humiliated or their work being rejected. Failure will never kill you; just your fear of failure might keep you from potential success. As one eases into a fearless mindset, success is just a few steps away.

Accepting failure is a necessary step towards unprecedented success. We take risks in our everyday lives. Sometimes taking those risks goes in our favour and sometimes it does not, therefore it is unrealistic to expect success all the time. Behind one success are a million failures and reattempts. It does not matter how many times one fails. Real failure is when a person stops trying to achieve one’s goal and real success in life is when a person looks failure in the eye and chooses to make another attempt rather than feel daunted or dejected.

“I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work. — Thomas A. Edison

Edison made roughly about 1,000 attempts before inventing a successful prototype of the light bulb, 1,000 tries before he was triumphant in his endeavours. However, he still considered these 1,000 failed attempts to be the necessary steps towards his ultimate success. Therefore, it is unfair to think that being successful in the initial attempts is a requirement to be labelled a success.

Accept your failures and learn from them. That is enough to set you on the path towards a glorious future.

Published in Dawn, Young World, September 5th, 2020