How to Embrace Failure and Succeed

The Gloom of Failure

We all tend to avoid failure at all costs. After all, no one wants to feel like a lost cause. Who would want to get 10% in an exam? Who would wish to lose all their investment in a financial scam due to an error of judgement? What about losing your job and means of sustenance? Or experiencing a costly divorce? Or being estranged from your kids?

Positive Effects of Failure

But is all indeed ever lost? Does failure not push us out of our comfort zones and rather inspire us to chart new territories? There is the saying that “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

Failure also builds resilience. Scholars describe resilience as the ability to withstand adversity and to bounce back from difficult life events. We see this characteristic of resilience in Jean de la Fontaine’s quote, “I bend and do not break.”

There are endless stories of people who have experienced one sort of failure or the other and who have emerged victorious. For instance, J. K. Rowling, the renowned author of the Harry Potter series, had her fair share of failure. She experienced financial difficulties and was a single parent surviving on Government benefits. At this time, she lost her mother and also struggled with depression.

Yet, amid all this, she didn’t give up. Out of all these negative experiences, she focused on her passion for writing and the Harry Potter series was born. This series has sold over 600 million copies and has been translated into 84 languages. Forbes named her the world’s highest paid author in 2008, 2017 and 2019.

Another classic example of resilience amidst failure is that of Colonel Sanders, the founder of the KFC foodchain. After a series of dead-end jobs, a failed legal career and a divorce, he contemplated ending his life after writing his will. He however pondered on his love for cooking and borrowed money from the bank to purchase a fryer and ingredients for a secret chicken recipe that he had discovered over the years. He travelled all over the country to sell his recipe to restaurants but was rejected over one thousand times.

One restaurant finally accepted his offer and KFC was born. Colonel Sanders became a multi-billionaire at the age of 88 after all his setbacks. He had this to say of failure: “One has to remember that every failure can be a stepping stone to something better.”

Embracing Failure and Succeeding

So, how do we embrace failure and succeed?

1. Avoid playing the blame game

To embrace failure and succeed, we must avoid playing the blame game. Instead of blaming others for our setbacks, we must accept responsibility for whatever has happened. It is only when we move past recriminations and what ifs that we can move forward.

2. Analyse the situation

We must analyse the situation and ask ourselves what we can do better given the same circumstances. Is it a question of curbing our hot temper or being more prudent with respect to financial investments? As the saying goes, “Every cloud has a silver lining”. We should therefore seek to find something good in every bad situation. That experience of failure could present an invaluable lesson to us only if we are analytical enough to decipher it.

3. Identify your passion

The jolt of failure should prompt us to identify our passion, gift, talent, etc. We can reflect on how to use our passion for our benefit and the benefit of society. Everybody has a talent, you may just not have discovered yours yet. For Colonel Sanders, it was cooking and for J.K. Rowling, it is writing. What makes you tick?

4. Work hard

There is just no substitute for hard work. We must be prepared to work hard to achieve our dream. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had this to say of hard work: “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.”

5. Don’t give up!

Above all, we shouldn’t give up, no matter how many times we fail. Success could be just around the corner. Harriet Beecher Stowe had this to say about not giving up: “Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn”.

Rather than shun failure, let us seek to embrace it and its life-changing lessons. As Confucius said, “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail”

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