Failure is one of those things in life that we all have to deal with. We all fail, and that’s okay. It’s often from our failures that we learn the lessons that lead us to success. Melinda Gates talks about how a failure at Microsoft lead to later successes. You never know where life is going to lead you; maybe you studied one thing and you ended up somewhere completely different. These are seven ways that failure can teach us more than success can.
Failure can show us what isn’t working in a career or goal and allow us to try to change that and to improve ourselves. It can also show us what does work and what we should keep doing. For example, if you try a certain business strategy and it fails it can teach you that you need to try a different approach because something about what you were trying wasn't working.
Failing can also show us what’s really important. We don’t necessarily know what we want until something goes wrong. Then we have to take a step back and decide if our goals are really what we want or if we should revise them. Resetting goals and figuring out priorities can lead to success in the future.
When things go wrong it's natural to want someone to help us find the right path again. This is when we seek out inspiration from others to help us succeed, but this is also when we can inspire others. They can learn from the mistakes that were made and find inspiration in our reluctance to give up.
Failure can make us realize we need to approach things differently. If one way didn't work, trying a different, more creative approach might be the answer. There was an exhibit in a design college called "Permission to Fail". It featured artists "failures" and mess-ups, which were all brought together to create a beautiful display of how even failure can creatively be success.
Life lessons such as failure can be good at teaching us things that we didn't know about ourselves. We learn what's important to us, what our priorities are, how we learn, how we can grow. Figuring out where to go and how to suceed an be a real self-exploration.
Failing at one thing can lead to other things that we might be more successful in. It creates opportunities for us to learn and grow. It's an old cliche saying, but when one door closes another one opens. Sometimes you don't know the path you're going to take until you fail and have to take another path.
Failing something means that you tried. You have to put in an effort and put yourself out there. Vivian Lee, an Editor at Little A Books, challeged herself to fail 20 times in a year and because she had to put herself out there to fail, she had far more success than she thought that she would.
Now that you how beneficial failure can be to your future success, go ahead and find new ways to put yourself out there! Set a goal that you may fail at or try something new, knowing you will grow from failure or be surprised by success!