I must preface this by saying that my perspective on failing has been shaped by the fact that I have failed so many times in the past. I can definitely say that I have failed much more than I have succeeded, but I am thankful for that fact.
No one wants to fail. I would personally rather just succeed at everything I want to be good at. Sadly, if I’m always succeeding, there’s no room for others to succeed too. While wanting constant success can be admirable, it can actually be pretty selfish and personally harmful. This is a difficult truth to believe because success is so highly valued in our society. In light of that, I will go over some reasons that failure is actually good!
So remember how I mentioned that if I’m always succeeding, there’s no room for others to succeed too? Think of it like an older sibling leaving several Easter eggs for the younger one to find. Even if the older sibling only takes three of the ten for his/herself, it isn’t losing. It’s winning in a different way. Now as an adult competing with other adults, I know that failure isn’t quite as fun. The simple way of thinking about it is thinking that you are unwillingly losing to a peer. Now, back to the younger sibling. Usually they are so innocent that they don’t realize they are being allowed to win (Which makes mutual winning even better). Even so, if you were to ask them to do the same for their sibling, they would be less willing to do it (Because they want to win). The problem here is how we define success. The older sibling feels successful if they leave enough Easter eggs for the younger one to find. The younger sibling only feels successful if they find the most Easter eggs, and is completely unaware of how keeping the Easter eggs to his/herself impacts others.
When I start wallowing in self-pity, I like to think of myself as the kid who is unaware of how my “failure” can help others succeed. While there is a whole lot of opportunity out there, we have to remember that we aren’t the only one’s trying to succeed! Every failure of mine is someone else’s success. There’s something extremely comforting about that fact.
Next, if you never fail, it’s really hard to appreciate success. One of the best aspects of failure is that it helps define success. If success was the norm, would it really be success? Probably not. For example, how could you explain light without darkness? If the earth never dimmed, could we really define light? It would just be. Dark can be defined as the absence of light and light can be defined as the absence of dark. We can still take light for granted sometimes, but we appreciate it all the more after a long night. In the same way, we may take success for granted, but it is all the more gratifying when it follows a failure.
Following that aspect of failure, also consider that it is the best way to learn. What if a teacher never marked your answers wrong on tests? You would be happy in the moment, but you would never learn anything valuable! Just because we think we’re correct, doesn’t mean we are. Sadly, sometimes we have to fail to realize that we aren’t on the right path.
Lastly, failure makes us stronger people. Personally, I find people who can’t gracefully lose extremely annoying. We all know that person who gets fervid over losses. The one who knows that you didn’t get the same job that they applied for, but somehow the fact that they didn’t get hired is so much worse than the fact that you didn’t get hired. These people are hard to be around because every failure is the end of the world! This goes back to my comment about how never failing can actually be harmful. Yeah, succeeding all the time sounds like it would make a person strong, but it actually has the opposite effect. Think of it like tempered glass. While regular glass seems pretty great, you throw a small rock at it and it shatters. To become strong tempered glass, you’ve got to get burned, but you can make it through hail storms without a hitch.
Anyways, it’s important to remember that failure is a necessary part of life. A few facts about failing: Everyone does it, it makes success greater, it teaches valuable lessons, and it makes you stronger. Just because we don’t like failing doesn’t mean it is all bad! Think of it like a kid having to eat vegetables. The kid sees it as a negative, but it’s actually pretty great. So embrace failure and appreciate success.
