Let Yourself Fail
Nowadays there is no room for failure.
You’re noddding your head with agreement? But wait, it’s an utter bullshit! Sadly, most people believe it.
You can’t avoid failures. Your life line may look like a smile, but it’s always scratched with moments when you get kicked in the ass. You get dumped, sacked or stood up by your father lover who turns out to be dating your lover. And even the space hates you, bombing your house with a giant meteorite. You feel anger or sadness… That’s perfectly normal. It’s hard to jump with joy when every minute seems to add another kilogram to this unbearable burden.
But you can’t control everything. People do bad things, go away, die. The world, however, miraculously undergoes changes all the time, leaving just a fleeting memory of a bee sting after torments of piercing pain.
Failure is not a punishment for living in a bad way. It’s a state, so natural and transitional like snow in winter. Everything depends on what use you make of it. Will you let it to bury you? Or maybe put your skis on and set off faster than ever? Nobody has any impact on that. You’re alone on the crossroads and only you decide which path to take.
Everyone fails sometimes — and the great ones even more spectacularly:
Henry Ford, before he established his famous entreprise, had bankrupted five times. Now, after 111 years of existence, Ford Motor Company has over 170 thousands employees.
Allegedly slow and unsociable as a kid, Albert Einstein first was expelled from school and then didn’t pass an entrance exam for the Swiss Polytechnic. Today he is considered to be one of the most influential sciencists in history.
Bill Gates together with Paul Allen set up a company Traf-O- Data, which read the data from traffic counters. Despite the lack of sizzling success it turned out to be fruitful experience during the creation of Microsoft several years later.
Before Harry Potter series J.K. Rowling had been a poor divorcee with child. Today she’s one of the richest and esteemed women on the globe.
Oprah Winfrey started her career as a TV reporter but soon was deemed ‘unfit’ for television. She didn’t give up and in 1986 she set up Oprah Winfrey Show which after 25 seasons remains one of the top-ranked TV shows in the U.S.
Charlie Chaplin was at first rejected by Hollywood studios, because his performance seemed too nonsensical.
Carrie, the first novel Stephen King wrote, was rejected by 30 publishers. He threw it into trash but his wife convinced him not to give up.
Michael Jordan was kicked out from his high school basketball team because of the poor scores.
Alan Rickman made his way onto the silver screen when he was… 46 years old. Up to that moment he hadn’t been successful with castings and even his part in Dangerous Liasons eventually went to John Malkovich.
Halle Berry came to Chicago to become an actress but soon run out of money. Completely broke, she was forced to live in a homeless shelter.
Steve Jobs was sacked from Apple by a man he hired. He made his great comeback after 10 years, after success of neXt and Pixar, and made Apple one of the most valuable and powerful companies on the globe.
Morgan Freeman was a starving artist at the beginning of his career. Nobody wanted to hire an inexperienced actor.
Colonel Sander’s existence was almost a lifelong failure. The success came to him at the age of 65 when he founded the first KFC restaurant. Now there are over 15 thousand of them.
Jon Hamm, famous for his stunningg performance in Mad Men, struggled with depression for years. He began his career as a set designer for porn films, worked as a waiter, but never gave up his dreams about being an actor. He was given his first role after four years.
At the age of 11 Lionel Messi was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency. The treatment was too expensive for Argentinian youth team but thanks to his father’s efforts the sporting director of FC Barcelona offered financial help to the footballer.
Stephen Spielberg applied several times for a film school at University of California, without success. So they lost an Oscar-winning graduate, as he subsequently chose other school.
When Robert Lewandowski finally got into Legia, the biggest Warsaw footbal club, he was in the reserve team. But not for long — soon he was given an envelope with the dismissal. Now he plays for Bayern Munchen.
All these stories lead to the conclusion that the failure is always a stepping stone to success.
I love watching people who fall and yet have the strenghth to live on. I admire their energy, determination, the willingness to change and develop. The’re also more true, even if only chasing rainbows.
So let yourself fail and don’t be afraid of it. Stop being a beast of burden living only to serve others.
Every loss and every fail is a chance to get loose and start over — and do it better. You’re going to go through difficult times, so learn how to make the best of them.
The world makes it possible to turn failure into success.
Have you noticed that sunset looks exactly like sunrise?
