Failure Is The Manure For Success
Posted on Sep 12, 2020 by Nidhi Agrawal (Co-founder, Director & Trainer)
Abraham Lincoln once said, "My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."
Our ability to tolerate failure decides our resolve to succeed. Failure is not the opposite of success – it is part of success. It is a part of life.
President Kalam once said that a stone when broken after the 100th blow, doesn't make the last blow the most successful one as all the blows before that enabled the last blow to succeed.
If we don't fail, we don't learn. If we don't learn we'll never win. It is only the darkness that makes light seem worthwhile. One should be prepared to fail if one wants to succeed. All failures contain within them the seeds of success. We must embrace our failures for eventually they will teach us the right way to success.
Light is never appreciated without shades of dark and greys. No life movies can be made without all shades. The struggles make us rich. They are a plethora of experiences which help us in our life journey. The Indian scriptures mention "Raag and Dwesh". Raag are the good experiences and dwesh are the hard experiences. People somehow develop a clear preference for only Raag and they run away from dwesh. Nature is thankfully immune to this wishful thinking and gives us both. It is a common consensus that strong and wise people never had an easy past.
The road to success starts away from our comfort zone. We must overcome our fear of failure and take life head on to achieve success. When ships are anchored in the safety of the harbor they last long but that's not what they are meant for. To complete voyages they have to undergo the perils of the sea.
Failures are a great teacher. They are a transitory pause to reflect and re-plan. It is certainly not a defeat. When life gives us lemons we must make a lemonade and relish it. The stones thrown at us are the building blocks of climbing higher.
Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb when asked how he succeeded despite failing 1000 times, replied, "I did not fail. I've just found 1000 ways that won't work." In fact, in 1914 his laboratory caught fire and his entire research, wealth and hard work went up in flames. Edison told his 24-year-old son, "Go get your mother and all her friends. They'll never see a fire like this again." When Charles objected, Edison said, "It's all right. We've just got rid of a lot of rubbish." Later, at the scene of the blaze, Edison was quoted in The New York Times as saying, "Although I am over 67 years old, I'll start all over again tomorrow." And he did.
In fact, failure is such a negative word; it seems strange that it can actually be a good thing. When army undertakes serious missions they make it a point to choose a commander who has failed at some point in his career rather than someone who has always been a success. Only with an experience of a failure, he can hold his nerve and can re-plan quickly if the mission goes awry.
Instead of 'failure' I prefer to use words like 'temporary setback', 'a minor hiccup,' or even a 'small hitch'. These words tell us that we must try again, reconvene, understand where we went wrong and make a new determined and better effort.
Nobody is perfect. Take risks and be prepared to make mistakes. Remember failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.