Failure - what is it?

“I’ve failed! I am good for nothing.” “I can never achieve anything.” “I am a failure.”

Don’t we all keep saying these sentences when we have not achieved our goals? Don’t we all get depressed after not getting good marks, or when others accomplish something and we don’t? But what is failure and who is actually a failure?

When you work very hard for something and still can’t achieve it, it doesn’t mean that you are a failure or you can’t do anything in life or you are good-for-nothing. I like to call failure an ‘opportunity’ as we can learn from our mistakes. Success is not a straight ladder, it has so many ups and downs.

If you fail at something, write your mistakes on a piece of paper. Make a plan. Work them out. If you fail at that particular thing again, again do the same thing. Maybe you made different mistakes. But keep writing your mistakes and improve them. Learning is the key. You don’t have to win or lose. You can learn.

A person is a failure only if he/she gives up. Giving up is what actual ‘failures’ do. They don’t know their true capacity. They don’t know what success is. They don’t want to be better. They don’t know that we can learn only from failure and not from success. They don’t know that only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

When, we fail at something, our best wasn’t enough and that’s alright. Next time, we can just be better than before. We don’t have to compare with others. We can just compare with ourselves.

Suppose I have a dog, an elephant, a monkey, a penguin, a seal and a fish. I conduct a race on who climbs the tree faster. The monkey will win. But that doesn’t mean that the elephant is a failure, does it? It just means that climbing the tree isn’t the elephant’s strong point. Comparing with others will always make you feel worse because everyone has their own strengths.

You know failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success. We don’t have to be scared of failure. We can embrace it. Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure……