When Failure is the Only Way Forward
How often do you think about failure? How often do you fail? Hopefully, not much. Do you fear it, work with it, or embrace it? Wait. Embrace it? Why in the world would we ever want to embrace failure? Because failure is one of life’s most outstanding teachers. There are countless lessons we all had to learn through failure. We learn to ride a bike by falling over. Athletes learn the correct way to perform when they see the results of doing something incorrectly. Even children learn to walk by falling and continually getting up and trying again.
When I entered college, I didn’t have a real clear idea of my career path. Many of us don’t in our first year. I had a lot of ideas with no direction. My mom, bless her heart, tried desperately to help. She came up with the brilliant idea for me to become an engineer--despite my unimaginable and well-documented problems with math. For more than a year, I hammered away, trying so hard to master each subject. However, math would continue to be a challenge for me. I managed to muddle my way up to the third level of calculus. But that would be as far as I could go. No matter how much I studied, sought out help, and tried to get extra credit, I achieved nothing short of absolute failure. I received the lowest grade possible--0.0.
I share this story because I learned a valuable lesson that year. No, not that I am terrible at math--I already knew that. I opened my mind up to a new career path I hadn’t considered before. It didn’t work out and so that year forced me to face the reality of my own limitations. It helped me discover what I truly enjoyed doing. Which would later pave the road to success I might have never discovered had I not experienced such epic failure.
Don’t try to fail, but don’t be afraid of it either. I promise you, you will fail--we all do. But when you do, see it as an opportunity to learn something new. Failure might change your work ethic, compel you to work harder and learn faster. Failure might give you greater levels of focus and clarity. It might solidify the path you’re on or create an entirely new one. There will be times when failure creates frustration, anxiety, depression, emotional pain, and even sometimes physical pain. There will be times when the hope of what could be is stifled by the fog of failure. And while that might sound like all bad news, the good news is that failure doesn’t have to be an end. It can be the mark of a new beginning. Sometimes failure is the best and the only way forward.
Challenges/Points:
We all love being successful, but sometimes the path to success goes straight through seasons of failure.
While we don’t want to try and fail, it is important to remember that failure is one of life’s absolute certainties.
Failure will no doubt create frustration, anxiety, and even fear. But there is always hope when we continue to move forward.
Questions:
Think about the last time you failed. How did you feel? How did you handle it?
Did that failure lead to something more remarkable in your life?
If so, how did that moment change the path you were on? If not, what do you think would have changed if you saw the failure differently?
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