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Failure is Such a Subjective Thing

3 min readSep 3, 2022

Isn’t failure in the eye of the beholder, too?

Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Who labels a particular action or event as a failure, anyway?

Each of us, actually.

One definition of a failure is a falling short of reaching a goal. If I have a list of tasks I plan to finish today, and don’t have them done by midnight, have I failed? Perhaps.

If I study for a final test, and don’t achieve a passing score, did I fail? Maybe.

But failure isn’t such a big deal. Disappointing, certainly, but not the end of the world. It’s not even the measure of your worth.

Take Michael Jordan, for instance. If you asked 100 random people who the greatest basketball player of the last few decades was, most of them would include MJ on the list. But Michael himself admits that he’s missed over 9,000 shots in his career, lost over 300 games, and failed over and over again in his life. Yet, he considers this willingness to try, to “take the shot” — as a success.

And so should you! If you’re still trying to reach your goal, then every day you get up and work at it is a success. So you’ll make mistakes along the way. Mistakes are a way of learning what does and doesn’t work. Mistakes are just a wrong path that you’ve eliminated on your way…

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Judy Derby
Judy Derby

Written by Judy Derby

Hey, ya’ll! I’m a retired social worker who always wondered what I should be when I grew up. Still don’t know. Love trivia, random thoughts and short stories.

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