Why Failure is a Good Thing
Written by Steve Goldberg   
Thursday, 03 July 2008

Atychiphobia, commonly known as the fear of failure, haunts everyone at some point during their lives. The fear of failing can be as crippling as an anxiety problem and as limiting as a physical disability. Why? Because severe fear of failure keeps people from expanding beyond their comfort zones, setting goals and trying new things—all things that help a person grow. The key to accepting failure as a good thing is to change the way you view failure.

Failure is Subjective

The term failure is subjective. Each person who uses the word, or who reads or hears it attaches a slightly different meaning to it. The common, pervasive contextual meaning of failure is basically not succeeding at something, falling short, not living up to expectations or making a mistake. Well, how do you define success? Success is defined differently by everyone, and so is failure. If someone calls you a failure, when you are doing the best you can, with every ounce of everything you have, then you are not a failure to yourself. If someone congratulates you for great success for something into which you put little effort, you may not really be a success.

If you change the way you think about failure, and include it as part of the formula for success, your entire perspective and way of doing things will change, and your sense of accomplishment and self-actualization will increase.

Failure Provides a Chance to Learn

Nobody can do everything right all of the time. It is just not possible. On the other hand, everybody knows somebody who thinks he or she is right all of the time—and that person is usually annoying, at best, and destructive at worst. Because of that, mistakes are a good thing. The myth of Icarus is that Icarus flew with a set of wings held together by wax. His father warned him not to fly too close to the sun, because the wax would melt, the wings would fall apart and he would fall into the sea. Overcome with a feeling of invincibility, Icarus flew too close to the sun and fell into the sea and drowned. It is better to adopt the attitude of learning and circumspection rather than an attitude of invincibility. That way, when you try new things, you will not be afraid of failure, nor will you encourage it. You will learn from it and move on. Only if you refuse to accept that you could have done something better and vow to learn how will failure become a key component on the path to success.

Open Your Eyes


Failure only becomes an obstacle if it causes you to stop trying. Failure is actually opportunity if you learn from every experience that you have and move on, with a better understanding of your self and your goals. For failure to aid with success, you have to be willing to open yourself up and let in every aspect of each of your experiences. When you are able to objectively view each experience and take away the things you did well, and identify the things you can do better, there are no longer any failures.

Never Never Never Give Up

That is a paraphrase of a quote from Winston Churchill’s speech at Harrow School on October 29, 1941. World War II was well underway, but would still go on for a long time. His famous quote has been championed, illustrated, painted on walls, put onto refrigerator magnets and inspired the classic drawing of the frog trying to strangle the duck that is trying to eat it. While that example may be a bit extreme, it is a very visual representation of never giving up.

Sometimes You Have to Change Direction

The rest of Churchill’s famous quote tells the rest of the story:

"This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

Never giving up means never giving up on yourself. Sometimes you are in a situation that cannot be fixed. At that point, you have to gather the benefits from the experiences, cut your losses and move on to bigger and better things. If you want to call that a failure, you can, but it is much more instructive and positive to call it a learning experience and keep going.

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Steve Goldberg said:

That's a great perspective to have JoAnn. Every failure IS a stepping stone that will bring you closer to your goal, as long as you're willing to learn the lesson.
July 22, 2008 | url

JoAnn King said:

Yes, failure can be a good thing. It's all about your perception. I use to say this affirmation years ago: "All things work together for my good." When you do not get the results you were intending on, it just means that you have learned what doesn't work and you can use that knowledge to try a different approach or to teach help others not to go down the same road. Also, it could simply mean that the time is not right for you to do whatever it is you are trying to do. There are plenty of people in history who failed at something many times before succeeding! See failure as a stepping stone. You just have to keep stepping.
July 03, 2008

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