Failure

I believe experiencing failure is a great thing.

Even though it sometimes causes pain and makes us question everything we believe in in our lives. Trying to figure out what went wrong and why is one of the most beneficial things that a human being can do. It makes us humble, it makes us think and also it makes us appreciate ourselves and others even more if we eventually do accomplish something and succeed.

Failure is so often seen as a bad thing. Especially in the US I always felt like failure is was one of the things that had to be avoided at all cost. Adults were not allowed to fail, college and high school students are threatened with failure and everything is being done to avoid kids having to experience failure at all. It seems as though failure was not allowed to be part of a person’s life.

But why?

There is so much to learn from failure, so much we can benefit from. We learn about ourselves and we learn how to cope with the feeling. If we have never experienced failure as a kid then how are we supposed to handle it as adults? How can we learn if we are treated as something so very fragile and are not allowed to experience any bad emotions at all? It seems like a parent’s worst fear these days is to see their child experience failure.

Yet in my opinion they should embrace it.

The most important things to a child in my opinion are that they are able to go out and experiment on their own, experience failure or success, go home and learn from their experiences. Children have an incredibly curious nature. Curiosity is something that should not be shot down because we are afraid of what might happen. It should be encouraged just as much as the results that come from it. As long as a kid is able to return home where they feel safe and can work out what happened, failure is not a terrible thing for them at all.

The need for the feeling of being able to return to a home where we can regroup and be supported after we have failed doesn’t just go away as we grow up. Even as adults we look for support at times when we have failed. Yet, the more we know about failure the better we are able to cope with it.

We don’t have to be afraid of it anymore. Instead we should look to accept the fact that we have failed and be happy about it, because it allows for new opportunities. We can end something and start over, start fresh. It’s better to know when we have failed and not be afraid to accept it. That way we can easily let go of things that are not working and look for new opportunities and learn from the experience we have gained.

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."

 – Winston Churchill