People act like failure is a bad thing, like it’s the worst thing in the world. We hear about “epic fails” and “colossal failures” all the time. In fact, I used to think, “I’d rather die than fail.”
The Benefits of Failure
It’s a huge misunderstanding, though. It turns out that failure is a good thing. It’s pretty much a basic requirement for success.
Here are some reason’s failure is a good thing:
We tried something new.
Really, we’re not likely to fail at something we’ve already done before. Doing the same thing or a slightly different version of it won’t get us very far in life. Just like the saying goes, “what got us here won’t get us there.”
We did something to stretch ourselves.
We increase our capacity for greatness in our lives by stretching ourselves. Stretching leads to growth. Not growing means there is stagnation. Seriously, have you ever met a great person who’s stagnant?
We learned valuable lessons.
Not that the school of hard knocks is fun, but it really does teach us a lot. There are many lessons that are best learned by experience. Book learning has it’s limitations. Experiential learning really drives the point home.
We are opening up new opportunities.
Achieving great things in life will come only from trying and, well, failing at some things.
Now What?
When we fail, we can’t give up.
We can’t listen to the nay-sayers, either. They think they’re doing us a favor by telling us something can’t be done. They say they want to spare us the pain of failure. If we listen to them, we–and our lives–will remain small. But if we try to avoid failure, we will only be holding ourselves back from making real progress in life.
So, next time you fail at something, find the benefits of the experience. Appreciate the lessons. Then get up and get going again.
Persistence is the key to success.
