First Fail, Then Rise Up Again
My survival guide for dealing with failures
I felt very embarrassed when I wrote this article because it’s a story of failures and I learned during my upbringing to be ashamed of failing.
But no one is successful from the beginning. Failures are inevitable. The pain and fear caused by failures we all feel should be shared and talked about. Then we accept the failures, learn from them, and rise up again.
My failures
Laugh at me if you want, I’m terrified of failing. Growing up in China as a single child, my parents have tried to compare me with every other kid who is better. Every tiny failure in my life triggers the replay of my mom’s voice:
“Look at Beth, she again had the best result on the exam. And you?”
I have thus grown to be competitive and jealous. The pain from a failed attempt at a problem can be so intense that it would make me question my intelligence, my ability, even myself as a person.
However, being competitive does not change the truth: Life consists of more failures than successes. My new “failure” experience is with writing.
I started to write not so long ago but I have been riding a roller coaster ever since my first article. I remembered that my friend, who…
