Failure: The biggest learning curve

What comes to mind when we hear the word "failure"? Probably words such as "not capable," "not successful," "defeat," and many more, right? We as a person aren't wrong when we feel that. The fact is, we're programmed that way. Our school punished us when we failed at getting good grades; we were always taught to avoid failure.

However, if we look at failure from a life's perspective, it's always guaranteed and inevitable. All successful people have embraced failure as a part of the process. Thomas Edison, the famous scientist, failed more than 1000 times before he finally discovered the light bulb. By the time he passed away in 1931, he registered 1093 patents to his name, out of which only 15 are considered huge successes, but the rest also have been equally important to his success and what he has given to the whole world.

Famous basketball athlete Michael Jordan was asked by a journalist how he became so successful. He said, "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." This is the answer we get from every successful person: the reason they succeeded was that they failed more than anyone else.

We always have to be mindful that a failure is an event, not a person. If a startup fails, the entrepreneur doesn't fail; he grows. If a project fails, the employee doesn't fail; he grows.

Many times, we associate the word "failure" with the end of something, but this isn't true unless we embrace and learn from it. Failure isn't the end of something; it's a stepping stone to success. Instant success will give us what we want, but failure will give us what we need.

For a minute, think about the moment you failed at something. Would you take it back? What did you learn from it?

As I mentioned, failure isn't the end until and unless we embrace and learn from it. Let's see how we can learn from failure.

Owning failures

The first learning curve from failure always comes with us owning them. The mistake isn't that we fail, but it's what we do after we fail. Many people try to justify their failures instead of owning them, which creates an even bigger problem. Owning our mistakes takes a little courage and confidence, but we need to own them.

Failing to acknowledge our mistakes will blind us. It will not create the space for us to learn and will make us repeat the same things again. It's not always that we have to own our failure in public, loud and clear, but it can also be within ourselves, in our mind and head.

Furthermore, owning our failure will also give us respect from the people around us. This might not be as easy as explained here, as we are completely trained the wrong way ever since we were small. Let's have a look at how we can own our failures and learn from them.

For this, we have to be very true and transparent to ourselves. We can lie to someone else, but we can never lie to ourselves. Ask ourselves a few questions, such as, "What are the things that we've done wrong?" Why did they go that way? What did we learn from it? What stopped us from moving forward? Reflect on these questions and seek solutions. If we ourselves can't find them, we can go to a person who is close to us, share with them how frustrated we are and what we did wrong, and ask their perspective on what could be done better.

Think and analyze

Since we now own our failure, we have created that space for us to learn; it's time to analyze things. Thinking and analyzing come more in a written textbook form. From writing down our failures and deeply analyzing how we can avoid those things next time when we do it. I have found this technique of writing my mistakes and failures on paper, along with a solution that I feel I could have done, to be very effective. Furthermore, we can seek the perspective of someone who is close to us and whom we look up to. After doing that, we need to stick these things in our minds, and when the same thing comes our way, we can now make a better decision.

Get back on the track

"Fall seven times and get back up eight times."

Since we have identified and studied what went wrong, it's time to get back on track. We have to have a clear path of what we're after, what are the things we need to avoid, and the things we need to add on. We always have to remember that learning is an evergreen process; we have to constantly check one step backward to see if the things we're doing are on the right track or not. We always have to go back and forth with this process of learning.