You don’t have to be a sage to know that failure is the stepping stone to success, we’ve heard that line a million times before. It’s always easy to say that failures are important in life and that they are the best teachers we can get. But only when the tough times come knocking on the door, do we realize how hard it really is to face them with positive intent.
So how do we actually approach our failures? I’m not great enough to be advising people on it, but I’m gonna share a few quotes with you today, quotes by some amazing people. The reason I want to share these sayings is because of the impact it has had on my personal life. Ever since I heard these quotes, I’ve started approaching my failures in a completely different way, and it has helped me skyrocket my confidence. Here are the quotes :
- “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm“- Winston Churchill
I still remember the first time I heard this quote. I immediately opened the notes app on my phone and noted it down. It was such a ‘wow’ moment for me. I’ve seen the fear of failure destroying people more often than failure itself. A man whose life is filled with victories will always have an equal, if not more amount of failures in it. Let me ask you a question. Who do you think is the greatest basketball player of all time? Not all of us will have the same answer to it, but there will be one name that most of us might think about: Michael Jordan. MJ is considered one of the greatest winners in the history of the world, thanks to his incredible run with the Chicago Bulls team, winning 6 championships with them. But do you know that he didn’t win a championship until his 7th year in the league? Do you know that he has missed over 9,000 shots in his career? He failed to even reach the finals for the first 7 years of his professional career. But did that failure stop him? Hell No. His enthusiasm and his desire to win were never affected by his failures. And guess what, people don’t focus on focus on his failures when they look at his career, because his success will always burn brighter.
Enthusiasm is a key factor in facing our failures. If you look at the lives of great people around us, you will notice that they never fear failure, they cherish it. Cherishing your failures and enjoying the journey is the real success ! So the first lesson is to face it with enthusiasm.
2. “Ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship” – Denzel Washington
Most of us treat failures as stumbling blocks in our path to success. But in reality, it is more of a diversion than a block. It just shows you another way. The hardships that come our way are not a threat to our success but they are the oil to the flame. I talked about the fear of failure in the above paragraph. I think that the reason why people fear failure so much is that they think of it as a threat to their growth while it is actually not. You need these hardships to lead a successful life; they are a necessity for improvement. If you think that you’ve had no failures and you’ve had a fairly smooth life till now, you’re probably doing something wrong. You’ve probably never left your comfort zone in life. It may seem like a good journey while it lasts but it will eventually lead to mediocrity. That is why Denzel said that ease is a big threat to progress. We have to stop relying on the things that make us feel comfortable. The second lesson is to stop looking at failure as a threat.
3. “Those who dare to fail miserably achieve greatly” – John F Kennedy
One of the things that I notice in highly successful people is that they are daring enough to try things that won’t even make sense to other people. Dreaming big is one thing, but finding the courage to pursue the dream with every ounce of strength and energy is the real deal. It is much easier said than done because it requires us to be fearless in the pursuit. Imagine the backlash that the Wright brothers would have received when they first started working on an aircraft. Their dream was to build something that had never been seen before and thus had a much higher risk of failure than any other form of idea could have had. There were two possible outcomes to this attempt, it was either going to be a revolutionary idea that was going to change the world forever or one of the dumbest mistakes in the history of mankind. The brothers were brave enough to believe in the former, but also, they were brave enough to fail miserably.
They say success is not for the light-hearted, because it requires a lot of courage to face failure. The next lesson is to have the courage to fail miserably.
4. “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” – Henry Ford
Failure is often viewed as a learning curve. But more often than not, people drift away from the lessons and focus more on the aftermath. I talked about having the courage to fail in the previous point; the people who are courageous enough would move on from a failure very easily. Once they’ve learned their lesson, it doesn’t bug them anymore. I believe that it all depends on the perspective of an individual.
 “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison
The way that we view our failures would make all the difference. Kobe Bryant had an interesting thought about this. He said that there is no such thing as failure in his world. “Failure is when you don’t learn from your mistakes. I always learn from my shortcomings and try to be a better person. If I have a bad day on Monday, I’ll be better on Tuesday. I’ll never settle for less”, he says. The lesson here is to learn from your failures.
Hope you liked this post. Thanks for reading!
Wordsbykenaniah 