Collins dictionary describes failure as “a lack of success in doing or achieving something”. Two questions you can ask yourself, are we meant to always achieve what we want? And why is failure a bad thing anyway?
If we always achieve what we want, how do we know if we actually deserve it and if it is what we want? When we talk about failure, we talk about the lack of success. But every situation has different angles to look at it. For example J.K. Rowling, widely known as the author of Harry Potter, one of the best selling authors of today, had her first book rejected by 12 different publishing companies. At the time, she was living on benefits and did not give up at the first hurdle of failure. She is now a millionaire. So, although the first 12 times she didn’t achieve what she wanted, she kept going. She believed that her time was coming and that sometimes you need to fail to succeed. One of the main skills I believe she displayed during this time was resilience.
If 2020 has thought us anything so far, it is that we are not as powerful as we thought and especially not alone. If you look at all the health care staff and police working endlessly with people suffering, not being able to help and protect everyone. If you were to look at this as a failure, as they are not achieving the success they may have hoped for, you would be wrong. These people show so much resilience, strength, and power, doing their best for everyone they work with. They put themselves at risk every day knowing they could fail and have failed. But they do it again and again because they see the value and growth in failure and how we can learn from the mistakes we make.
When a kid is learning to walk, they fall over many times and they keep at it as they know there is something greater that will happen if they walk. This is the first time a child learns to really fail when they fall over for the very first time. It is generally met by a parent comforting the fright they gave themselves, and an acknowledgment of how good they did. When they manage to walk, they are met with praise and attention and this continues when they learn to talk, ride a bike and so on. They learn from these interactions that failing is okay and that it helps them learn to achieve their final goal.
But if the child isn’t given reassurance when they failed and only praised when they did well, they don’t understand what failing is. If their parents put too much pressure on them to only get the best marks, they are thought to never fail. These kids and then adults don’t know how to deal with the emotions and learn from it, aren’t flexible.
Below is a table referred to as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Maslow explains that to achieve the top point of the pyramid referred to as self-actualisation where you become the best that you can be, and all that you desire, first you need to achieve all the other parts of the pyramid. I believe to achieve a lot of these needs, you need to fail to understand and to know what it is you actually want to achieve in the long run.
The Oxford dictionary gives the definition of resilience as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness”. It is the ability to bounce back when life knocks you down, if not better at least with the same strength as before. It helps you recognise failure and still be able to come back and take it on again. I believe we are born with a certain amount of resilience but we lose that along the way if it is not developed and we don’t allow ourselves to grow through actions like failure.
Failure is difficult and hard, it is unknown, which also makes us uncomfortable. But it can enable us to master important acts like compassion, empathy, resilience, kindness, success, and gratification, amongst so many other things. Throughout history lots of people have failed, but, some, were resilient and kept trying, without them, we may not be where we are today. Some of these people include Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, Beyonce Knowles, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and so many more who did not give up, who have achieved self-actualisation through their failure.
I asked two questions at the start. Should we always achieve what we want? I believe, that I don’t think we should always achieve what we want, it makes us greedy and unappreciative of everything that we could potentially gain from failing. The second question was, is failure a bad thing? I believe it isn’t, we can gain so much from failing. I truly believe failure is our real success, and I am succeeding all the time because I am failing too.
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live
so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you
have failed by default.” — J.K. Rowling
