What do you learn from failure?
One of the worst things in life is to experience a major failure. No one likes to fail. Actually, almost everybody would do anything to avoid failure. They take into consideration the lengths they need to use to pay a fair price — only to avoid the experience of failure. But something unbelievably valuable is missing: they are losing out on the lessons that fail.
You are filled with negative emotions and feel worthless. That is why most people do something they can to avoid failure, even though this means that they will never try something new. Although it contains negative energy, failure is positive. You can learn from a failure that you would not have learned otherwise — you can draw from a failure.
Indeed, only because of the lessons they learned from past failures were some of the world’s most successful people successful.
Have you recently experienced a significant failure? Here are seven important lessons from failure.
1. Failures always come before success
You just have to look into history to see that failures are always successful. The biggest inventors in the world were not successful the first time. Nor have renowned architects, engineers, car designers, chefs, artists, photographers, politicians, etc. They stumbled, sifted, and conceived and created something better, stronger, longer-lasting, more memorable, and worthwhile. For them, failure was not the end, but the start of a successful journey.
2. Failure Teaches You That Success Is Never Guaranteed
Everybody wants to be successful when trying anything new, whether it is starting an online business, applying for a dream job, starting a blog, or even starting a new relation. This desire for success can, unfortunately, sometimes be limited.
For example, some people always wanted to start their own business but never did it because they don’t know if they will succeed. They are stuck in paralysis and wait for the perfect time, which unfortunately never comes. They actually stop from starting their business because of their desire to succeed.
On the other hand, someone who has had a failure knows that success is never guaranteed. Failure occurs sometimes because of factors outside your control.
3. You learn flexibility
After failure, the approach that did not work will not end with a favorable outcome. It quickly becomes apparent that you have to be slightly more resilient in your next attempt to resist failure. Here’s where it’s convenient to review, adapt, change or even throw away the old way and start fresh. You would never learn to be so flexible without failing first.
4. Failure Teaches You to Embrace Change
If you’ve experienced a major failure, you know that, despite your best efforts, things could go wrong. Wisdom is always a chance—you learn not to let your fear of failure stop you.
You are driven to follow your dreams by failure. It will teach you to try and try until you do. That is what leads to success eventually.
As Winston Churchill once said, success moves without loss of enthusiasm from failure to failure.
If you are going through failure, it’s essentially the universe that tells you something is wrong.
This failure might tell you, for example, that you did not take care of your studies if you fail in college. Likewise, if your business fails, the failure can tell you that you did not consider some business factors.
As Albert Einstein’s common quote goes, foolishness does the same thing over and over and expects different results. You will continue to experience failure if you do things as you did before.
This means you need to change something more about your effort to solving your failure. You need to look back on what you did wrong, see what changes you did wrong, and decide the next time you have to make. Your failure in this way teaches you that change is the only way to overcome failure.
5. Failure Can Be a Great Source of Motivation
Most people are dampened by failure and feel like they are leaving. But failure can be an excellent source of motivation for people with the right mentality.
Michael Jordan’s basketball legend is a fantastic example. Michael Jordan wanted so much to be part of his basketball secondary school team at the age of 15. His coach did not, unfortunately, think that it was worth being part of the team, in particular, because he was 5’10” and could not even Dunkle.
When he realized he didn’t cut it, young Michael was really crushed. In fact, that night he went back home to cry in his room. However, Michael was determined to show the trainer that he deserved to be in the team rather than letting this kill his dream.
He trained as hard as he can, motivated by the pain that his team was not made. He eventually won a place on the high school team and became the best basketball player ever.
This is an example of the intrinsic motivation[1] that you are very passionate about because you fail to achieve an objective.
You can make your failure a source of motivation, much like Michael Jordan. Let your pain fail to achieve your goal lead you to more work until you realize your dreams. Rather than let it break you down.
6. No one “right” way
There is only one correct response to life is not a simple math problem. It may not be the same for anyone else what feels like a failure. Similarly, a mousetrap, home, or bridge can be made many ways, a dinner with chicken can be prepared or buildings are painted. Once you recognize that no one is “right” to do things, you’ll be able to learn a lot from failure. This is true even if others try to tell you that, like they alone, you haven’t done so in the right way. The right way is the way it works — and for every person it is different.
7. Failure Is Not Final
It feels like your world is finished after a major failure. You feel like you don’t have it to fulfill your dreams – or something worthwhile. Some people actually give up entirely on life after a major failure.
However, if you can learn from the failures of some of the most successful people in the world, it is not that failure.
When Steve Jobs was kicked out of his parent’s garage he began, it felt that the world had ended. Jobs, however, stamped out, set up other companies, and ultimately came back into being as CEO of an Apple in conflict. He then transformed it into a company that is today worth a trillion dollars.
Likewise, after he was fired from a newspaper for “not being creative enough,” Walt Disney experienced his first failure. Then he started an enterprise that also failed. Underground, he started the business, which bears his name and was a great success.
Many other highly successful individuals have failed to succeed. It is not the end of the road to failure that you can learn from their failures. You can overcome your failure and succeed more successfully than you had ever imagined.
You have self-confidence, which is one of your key soft skills for success, knowing that you can still pick up and be successful again.
8. Failure gives you a starting point to move on
Failure at the end of the sentence is like an obvious punctuation mark. It gives you a point of departure. You have an open page in front of you once you failed. You can stop and remain on this page, of course, but you should be forced to act by the opportunity ahead of you.
9. Failure Broadens Your Perspective
Very often we get too deeply involved in pursuing our goals so that in our lives we forget other important things. You might focus so much on growing the company that you overwork and forget other things that are important to your life like your family or even your health.
For example, you may have chosen to run a freelance company to better balance your work and spend more time with your family. However, you realize over time that you spend more time on your freelance company than on an 8 to 5 job.
You realize that your business doesn’t earn money even after all of your hard work and effort, and decide to shut it down. You accept reluctantly that your company fails.
A failure like this gives you an opportunity to look back and redefine what is important to you. This is when you know that you were too focused on successful business, that you really got a sense of why you started the business—to have a better balance between work and life.
This period of reassessment of your life after a major failure enables you to broaden your perspective and concentrate on other things that could bring greater happiness and satisfaction than previous objectives.
10. Failure Teaches You to Stay Humble
It’s a lazy teacher to succeed. Many times, following a number of successes, most people can achieve success. It makes you feel unbeatable, as all you do is meant to be a success.
This often leads, unfortunately, to arrogance. You begin to play more risky games because you think you can’t stop anything. In the end, it makes you fail.
However, you never let your head succeed if you have experienced failure. Even if things go well, you know at any time they can go wrong. You are remembered as being human and humble. This reminds you.
It also facilitates the handling of things if you fail in the future. Failure is much harder to deal with if you have always succeeded in all your efforts and arrogantly believe that you can’t fail.
11. Failure Teaches You That Not Every Idea Is Worth Pursuing
Sometimes you fail, not because you have made no effort at all, but because you have been pursuing the wrong idea. You might get too optimistic when things go your way and want to act on any thought that comes into your mind.
Failure reminds you that not all ideas in your head are great. Experience failure lets you filter your ideas, carry out thorough assessments, and act on only the best-looking ideas.
For instance, the company was literally on its knees when Steve Jobs returned to Apple back in 1996. One of the most dramatic measures Jobs has taken to return the company to profitability was to reduce the company’s dozens of product ideas.
Jobs brought a handful of product ideas to the company’s attention. This focus on the most promising ideas led Apple to become one of the largest companies in the world from a struggling company.
Like jobs that had failed when driven from Apple, failure can teach you that it is not worth pursuing every idea.
12. Others don’t hold your failure against you as much as you think
Society is full of examples of people who have made colossal mistakes. Whilst the errors of rich and renowned people may captivate headlines for a while, in fact, most people have not experienced such failures too long against someone. However, there are certain exceptions, and those are related to failures that have done great damage to others. In general, however, it is the person who believes that his own failure is greater than others.
Wrapping Up
Failure is a bad practice nobody wants to experience. But the truth is that failure is unavoidable. As long as you try something you have never done, you can’t completely avoid failure or continue to pursue your dreams.
This is not to say that the failure has not its silver coating, despite the pain caused by failure. Failure can give you valuable lessons if you pay attention. I shared 7 important lessons that you can learn from failure to help you transform failure into something positive.