Success Hidden in Embracing Failure.
When we fail, it is easy to doubt our potential, but it is essential to know that success happens when you embrace failure; it gives you an opportunity to recognize an error and find a solution.
Failure is not negative; failure is, in fact, positive. When we fail in life, which we often do, it is essential to remind ourselves that it is an opportunity for growth. Look at failure as a challenge. When we are born, we do not walk immediately; we have to teach ourselves how to walk.
As we teach ourselves this, we will often fall as a result of practice. But how do we end up walking? Falling countless times made you master the art of walking. When we take a step and then fall, we quickly rise again and keep trying. We then learn that when we position our legs in a certain way, we are able to gain our balance.
Failure is growth. When you grow, new challenges arise. Thus, it is essential to view failure as the foundation of growth, rather than a negative thing. When you view failure in a negative aspect, you get stuck in the same position.
Courage becomes hard to obtain. However, when we change our mentality towards failure by starting to view it as a positive thing, we can accept the changes, learn from them and move on. This builds inner resilience, knowing that whenever challenges occur, you will overcome them and learn from them.
Learning happens when you accept the situation at hand. When you blame yourself or think about what you could have done to prevent the problem from happening, learning becomes hard. For instance, when you study so hard for a month preparing for your math final exam, you take the exam and find out that you did worse than you thought you did.
If you had a thought that failure was bad, you would have lost hope. However, if you saw failure as growth, you begin to inquire where you went wrong so that the mistake does not repeat itself.
Therefore, if a mistake repeats itself countless times, that means that the individual involved did not learn from the mistake (s) that happened.
A famous quote from Thomas Edison, “I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” This quote explains that failure shows that one needs to find another solution to a problem (re-evaluate).
Embracing Failure Case Scenerio
“A young adult, age 21, named Marnie experienced verbal, physical and mental abuse while leaving with her parents. One beautiful day, she decided that she had had enough of the abuse and decided to pack some of her clothes (the ones she needed) and leave the house without knowing where she was going to go.
Fortunately, her friend and her family welcomed her, but told her she could only stay with them for a month. Luckily, Marnie was working at Tim Hortons. Marnie was happy to have a place to stay despite the short-term agreement. Marnie was determined to find her own place; therefore, she picked extra shifts and saved up. She kept on looking on Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji until she came across an office room that was being rented.
Although the space was small, she was determined to fight through this challenge and hoped that she would be in a better place soon. Her friend’s family gifted her with a mattress and a study chair as she was starting her first year as a university student. Marnie was grateful, she continued picking up shifts, bought herself more clothes for the winter season that was soon to set in and continued saving up for a better space. When she was ready financially, she moved to a better house but had roommates.”
What does Marnie’s story tell us? She embraced her situation and knew that it was not going to be a permanent situation. She worked hard and restrategized. That is the mentality we need to have with failure. Failure is a lesson, not a punishment. It makes you strong, not weak!