Why Failures Should Be Considered As Success
In my life I failed a lot.
Since I was a little kid failures are part of my life. I failed to understand people. I failed to make friends, failed to have a girlfriend for many years. Later on I failed on exams, I failed at interviews. I had ups and downs at jobs, some were bigger some were smaller.
Until I reached the age of 25 I considered failure as a disaster. Something I should avoid at all costs. It is a tragedy. It makes me worthless and other people will think that I am worthless.
At 25 there was a turning point. Slowly I started not to care what other people think. There are a bunch of people whose opinion matters, but I don’t worry about whether random people think I’m crazy or not. Most of the time people just don’t care at all. You think they do, they judge but actually they don’t even care. When I realised this, it made everything easier.
At 25 I started to look at failures differently. I started to like not to succeed. I know it might sound strange. I think about the situation afterwards and analyse what happened. What went well, what went wrong. Like a tiny retrospective or introspective. How can I do better next time?
Like with dating. I hated dating. I was forcing myself to go on dates. I was scared of rejection. I started to think about the situation afterwards. What went well, what went wrong and how can I improve on it next time. I had an action plan how to be better next time. After a while I was keen on to go and try again a little bit of different. Many failed dates, many improvements later, I noticed girls would more and more likely to go on second and third dates with me.
I consider failure as a possibility to improve. Especially when I try out new things, when I develop new skills. I love to fail fast, experiment, inspect, adjust and adapt.
For me, that’s the key to success. If i would describe the road to success it would be something like this: Try countless times, fail countless times but success once.
Failure is a part of our life. Like birth, death, pain, pleasure. You should never consider it as a tragedy. It’s inevitable. It’s with us since we are born. As babies we try how to grab something, try to walk, try to talk. We fail more than a million times. We adjust and try again unconsciously. Somehow when we grow older we lose this attitude. This skill. We try to do everything perfectly at the first try. Which is just not possible. We should re-learn the skill of failing as we grow old. This is our key to success.