Getting Good At Failure

The title of this story seems like a contradiction in terms, but there is an important lesson when you read through the entire story. I was going through my meditation this morning when I came across this title, so I decided to check it out. I’m glad that I did because the lesson stuck with me.

Getting good at failure is the key to success in life, and whatever goals you set for yourself, the deliberate emphasis on something that seems inherently harmful masks the true positive nature of the message. So often, we seek the easily identifiable course of action because it provides the easiest and quickest way to achieve our goals. It is too late. We realize that is rarely the case, but only after we have invested time and effort into it.

When we are presented with a choice, we weigh the pros and cons beforehand. It is human nature to try and avoid failure as much as possible, and when failure isn’t a clear choice, we tend to take the one that makes us feel the most comfortable. We fool ourselves into thinking that we know what is best all of the time when we usually have no clue.

Failure is not the end of the world; it is a learning experience when we look at it correctly. Learning from our mistakes and failures teaches us how to make better choices the next time. Failure is a means of improving the odds that we will succeed the next time if we heed the lesson we learned.

No one likes failure; we are judged on how often we succeed instead of how long it took us to get there. We see the long process as needing more motivation rather than a learning curve. We need to view failure as attempting, not just sitting still and being too afraid to take a chance. Failure also teaches us perseverance through adversity and rejection. Patience can only be learned with failure because they are intrinsically linked in the grand scheme.

The next time you experience a failure, view it as a temporary setback and not as a failure. Be Kind to yourself, don’t judge yourself too harshly, and then try again. That is the key to success. I use this approach with my writing. I don’t take the lack of immediate success as a sign that I am a lousy writer; I see it as teaching me to be a better writer the next time. 

The next time you seem to fail at something, learn from the experience and move on. It is a much more pleasant experience than berating yourself over something.