Make Friends with Failure

Most people view failure as something negative, as something you never would want to experience. The truth is that failure is a necessary aspect of life that is not at all negative, in fact it is incredibly positive. Failure is your greatest opportunity to grow. Many people give up shortly after failure, this is one big reason why so many people live a life of constant disappointment.

I am writing this article today to change the definition of failure in your mind. I want you to see failure differently so that you can move your life in directions that you never thought were possible.

So, what precisely is failure? Failure is when you don’t get a desired result. There is a particular Disney movie that I am fond of called, “Meet the Robinsons”. In the film a young boy loves to create new inventions and he dreams of changing the world with science. His track record is filled with disasters and everyone around him knows to take cover or put on a helmet when he unveils one of his new inventions. His continued failure leads to him becoming disheartened and frustrated. Through a series of unexpected events he finds himself in the future and eventually learns about his future self. In the future the little boy has established a huge inventing company that changed the face of the world multiple times. The motto of his future self is, “Keep moving forward”. At one point the futuristic family that the boy finds himself with applauds his failure at fixing an invention. They tell him that he tried and that by failing he learned, whereas with success you don’t learn as much.

This story is relevant because even though he failed he learned from the mistakes he made and eventually built the dream he always wanted. It is not common for something, especially our biggest dreams, to come true on the first try. In fact if you have something you want to accomplish that you have never accomplished before, and you do it on your first try you should consider it a miracle.

No matter what it is that you want to do don’t be disheartened by a slip up, view it as a grand opportunity to get closer to what you want. Utilize your good friends why and how. When you find that things didn’t go the way you wanted them to ask yourself why it didn’t work out. Then follow your why questions with the how question of how can you make it work next time.

Be motivated by slip ups because if you have slipped up that means that you are trying to move towards something you want. Just trying to get to something you want is an accomplishment. So many people just dream of what they want while sitting in front of the television sets doing nothing about it. You are actually moving towards your goal. You can not fail if you haven’t tried, and 99% of the time you cannot succeed unless you have had a few failures along the way.

So, from this day forth you will not be discouraged when things don’t go the way that you hoped they would. You will be inspired by the opportunity to improve your technique and get even closer to the things that you want!

Corey Woods