The Greatness of Failing

Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember.

-Anne Sullivan-

I have noticed that the biggest reason people don’t do anything, why they don’t take chances, is the dreaded fear of Failing. Even the word “Failure” tends to leave a bad taste in your mouth. It exposes our limits and our weaknesses. It shows that we are not infallible and invulnerable. 

GOOD! The greatest gift you can give yourself is failing. 

Hear me out before you decide that I lost it. Success is great, but the truth is, if you only do what you know you’ll succeed, then you will achieve very little in life, and grow even less as a person. You see, failing is a teacher. It measures your character, it humbles you, and it helps you grow. 

Only of course if you know how to fail properly.

When you succeed, you made it. The reality is, you can never know why you made it. Was it skill, was it preparation, or was it just simple luck. You can lie to yourself and live a diluted life by assuming it was that you are just that good. The truth is you will never know.

Now, failing works differently, as long as you are willing to look at it without denial. You have to accept failure without a judgmental attitude. You failed…so what. As long as you learned from it, it’s not a bad thing. You grow, you change, and you become better. Failing is humbling, and to be honest, we all need to be humbled every once in a while. In my book, someone who fails and grows is better than someone who succeeds and stays the same.

Look at why you failed. It might be you made the incorrect assumptions, maybe you were improperly prepared, or maybe it was just bad luck. The reasons you can fail are limited only to the amount of variables you are willing to analyze. And based on what you learned, you change it. 

You dust yourself off and try again. 

That’s the other lesson of failing, Perseverance. You learn from your mistake and try again, knowing full well you might fail again. We think that successful people are those who never fail. The truth is that successful people are those who never gave up.