I have failed before. I have failed a lot of things.
I have failed tests, I have failed to listen to instructions, I have failed friends, and I have failed myself. None of these are things that I have done intentionally, though I do give myself a hard time, wondering what would have happened if I had maybe studied a little harder, or paid more attention, listened more, or tried harder. It’s something that everyone does and something almost everyone fears. For a lot of people, failure is this huge, dark cloud that hangs over you, waiting for the right moment to pour rain and lightning upon you.
Failing is hard, but it is also a fact of life. Even if you went through elementary school, middle school, even high school, with perfect grades, achieving everything you’ve ever dreamed of, there will come a time that you will fail at something. And it’s okay. No one is sitting there, wishing failure upon you but it is a learning experience everyone has to go through.
Failure teaches you more about yourself than anything else will because failure can put you at one of your lowest lows, and failure makes you learn how to pick yourself up. Failure teaches you what disappointment means, and how you are going to move forward.
You learn how to do better, and it makes you think about what you could have done better. Most importantly, though, failure teaches you how to forgive yourself. Immediate response to failure is anger, frustration, and irritation. You’re mad because you know that you could have done better, and yet you didn’t. But after the initial anger, you accept it, and it makes you prepare for further opportunities to succeed, and for further failures. With this preparation comes an understanding that sometimes it happens. Sometimes life does not just magically work out the way you expected it to and that honestly, it is okay to fail sometimes because you can pick yourself up and keep going.
That’s the way life works. Everything works out okay in the end, but only if you keep moving forward and learn from the failures and mess-ups. You can’t, or at least shouldn’t, be too hard on yourself for being human, making a mistake, or failing at something. Sometimes even when you put your all into something, and you still don’t come out on top, and that’s just how it is. You don’t control what life is going to hand to you, what twists of fate will strike, but you do get to decide how you’re going to react to it. Remaining positive will bring more joy and acceptance to your life than having a negative reaction to things that can’t always be helped. Keep moving, stay positive, and let every failure be something you can grow from.
