Importance of failure in life

A man in his black suit stood in front of a huge crowd of people and cleared his throat to start his speech for the day.

“I was 21 when I achieved the first success of my life. Now I am 43. I have achieved success in various industries. Every time I succeed, I was interviewed by the media and I would be invited to conferences to provide my proficient speech.

To be in numbers, I have been successful in my business for about a decade. Every person I meet, every person I speak with and the people I am surrounded with know how successful I am now. But the fact is I am a failure.

Even now I have not succeeded in my life. What other people in (the market) consider success is not my definition of success. To be frank, still now I am a failure.”

The entire hall of professionals and young students started chattering about what was happening.

He cleared his throat in order to gain attention of his audiences and looked at the huge banner which was dangled behind him.

“Importance of Success in life.” He read out the title aloud and made a timid smile scratching his nose.

“Well, I haven’t learned anything from success. As I confessed earlier, I haven’t yet achieved my success in life. But I am sure that I have the privilege to speak about the importance of failure in life, the greatest teacher in every one’s life.

Every time in my life, when I cheered myself that I have attained success of my life, there stood a huge failure in front of me, smiling at my misconception. When considering success with the underlying failure, it didn’t provide me with complete happiness.

But I will share with you the five important lessons that failure has taught in my life. It will not speak about how to overcome failure; rather it speaks about how to face failure in life and how to accept failure in life.”

#1 The real meaning of failure

The first lesson is to understand the real meaning of failure. If you have the opportunity of meeting wise men in your life, don’t hesitate to as this question.

‘How do you define failure?’

Every great man has their own meaning for failure. They define success and failure on their own perspective.

As of my perspective, failure is nothing but forceful water that splashes on our face whenever we feel languorous in our monotonous life, which conveys that our life is not yet completed, to stretch ourselves far from our comfortable zone in order to achieve the infinity.

#2 Importance of failure in life

In the top, there lies a golden trophy awaiting for you. But in order to claim it, you have to make yourself hard climbing the staircase.

The golden trophy resembles your success of your life whereas failure is the staircase that you have to climb in order to achieve it.

Pain is the stagnant reward that you gain when you push your limits wider. Accept failure as part of the process because failure is your staircase to success.

#3 Failure as a teacher in our life

Every phase in our life teaches us a valuable lesson. Similarly the phase of failure teaches us who we really are. It allows us to explore what state we really are in. It reveals our inner spirit and courage which ignites the fire in us to strive for our success.

‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ – Samuel Beckett 

#4 Learn how to handle failure

Remember, the most painful but valuable teacher is our life. It teaches us in every possible but practical aspect. Failure by itself is a lesson which teaches us to surmount the obstacles in the pathway to success in our life.

Every great leaders and successful people around us convey us to make mistakes and to learn from it, because failure is a great teacher in one’s life. Master yourself to learn from your mistakes and if possible try to learn from others mistake also.

#5 Respect failure – the final step to success

If you are here for finding a solution for the question how to overcome failure in life, I am sorry guys. There is no concept called overcoming failure. There is only one option, accept failure. But remember, accepting failure doesn’t mean to give up.

‘Success is stumbling from failure to failure, with no loss of enthusiasm.’ – Winston Churchill

Accept failure as part of the process and learn from it. Better you failure grows, better you learn from it and better your success would be. Success by itself means nothing. Only the pathway to success is interesting and makes you feel alive. And the interesting pathway is full of failures.”

As he completed his speech and walked his way back to his seat, the entire auditorium exploded with their round of applause. He genuinely took back his seat in the row of alumni with a gentle smile.

About the Author:

Shripathy Swaminathan is a passionate writer and an aspiring author from the Manchester city of India. Graduating in the field of engineering, he started his quest to find the writer in himself in order to inspire people by his thoughts.

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