How to learn valuable lessons from failure. 5 Lessons to learn when we 'Fail'
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Think of failure as a highly effective teacher, at the same time as a harsh and unsympathetic one. The value we obtain from our failure is dependent on the lesson we learned.
If we start perceiving failure as a harsh judgement of our skills and abilities we will not learn to dread failure.
Try to look for the lessons failure give us otherwise we will start to see ourselves as incompetent and inadequate.
The way to look at failure is as someone gives us feedback and we improve upon it. The shift in perspective can do us good. Instead of piercing us as incompetent we will incorporate the feedback and try again.
In the next chapters, we will discuss the rewards you can collect when you fail.
1. Success often comes from multiple failures
I will give you an example of Babe Ruth(baseball player) who was known as the Strike Out King and the Home Run King. He once said 'every strike brings me closer to the next home run'
By this statement, he has recognised that failure wasn't the ultimate and final outcome. He saw failure as a mile-post on his way to accomplishing something big and remarkable.
2. Each failure provides a valuable experience.
Oftentimes, experience is higher valued than success as it gives us a good perspective regarding our abilities. Experience is necessary for personal growth. Experience makes us aware of our limitations, and shows our deficits that need our attention to improve upon.
Every time we do not obtain success and the plan does not go our way, we gain a deeper understanding between our decision and actions.
This type of knowledge will shape our future decision-making process and action courses. By failing at something we gain awareness and therefore become more effective, all of which make us more tenacious.
3. Persistence is everything
The inventor Thomas Edison in his journey to invent the light bulb was met with failure many times. He achieved the invention of the light bulb after thousands of times failed attempts. He never gave up on his invention and also said I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work'.
The lesson Thomas Edison learn from his attempts was that persistence in face of failure is a crucial step toward success. The refusal of giving up is more important and better valued than intelligence, talent, and education.
Persistence is the trait of mental toughness and is everything when failure occurs.
4. Fear is unnecessary and unproductive.
A Comfort zone is a dangerous place to be. Fear is the number one reason that prevents us from taking action. We always overthink the possibility that something will go wrong and that we will do something that will result in a negative outcome. We worry too much that we will make fools of ourselves.
The other side of this fear is that over time we learn to push through this fear and slowly become desensitized to negative outcomes. Once you start desensitizing, we learn that the negative outcomes we imagined are less likely than tragic. In short, we realise that our fear of failure is overrated.
Once you start to grow accustomed to failure, you will start perceiving it as an opportunity to learn and develop upon it. In time you also become more comfortable taking calculated risks that lead us to improve our circumstances.
5. You decide how you feel about failure.
You are the master, so you choose how you respond to failure. You can choose to embrace the negative emotions that come with failure. Or you can choose to reframe failure and assign a positive emotion to it.
If you diced to look at failure as an opportunity to learn, we can associate emotions such as interest, hope, inspiration, pride and even gratitude. These positive emotions will help us embrace optimism about our ongoing journey of self-development.
All of us grow up fearing failure, is embedded in our DNA. The problem with the fear of failure is that we fail to shed it in our adulthood. Is always present in our minds, it dictates the action and decisions we take, and is preventing us from venturing out of our comfort zone.
When you take action in reframe your perspective of failure, we allow ourselves to take advantage of its insights.
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