Top 10 Lessons to Learn from Failure

 

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“When you reach an obstacle, turn it into an opportunity. You have the choice. You can overcome and be a winner, or you can allow it to overcome you and be a loser. The choice is yours and yours alone. Refuse to throw in the towel. Go that extra mile that failures refuse to travel. It is far better to be exhausted from success than to be rested from failure.” – Mary Kay Ash

Failure has several assorted interpretations that can be taken as a precious learning experience, source of inspiration and an opportunity to start intelligently. It can be perceived as a worthless obstacle and insurmountable barrier to the way of destination – it is defined according to the interpreter’s matrix of mind. Failures might result into temporary defeats and disappointments but resting on it will instigate ignorance about your dispositions and summon everlasting regrets upon realization in the coming phases of life. Don’t be afraid to fall, it begets courage while taking risks and initiates to come out from your elongated comfort zone to collect virtue, benevolence, wisdom, generosity and honesty, laying on the rough surface of failures.

Patience
You steal a handful of patience, perseverance, and decisiveness from failures.

While enduring and overcoming the process of failures, you develop a rational outlook with a courageous soul that eventually leads you to success. Patience is your focused energy and silent function that accelerates the process of your success.
Note: Don’t extend your patience for prolonged period of time that you become a coward. Don’t justify it as the virtue of waiting; it will make you idle and lazy. Instead, use it as your determination that processes your energy silently, steadily and positively.

Humility
Read about any greatest personality, you will come to know that they all expressed humility. Their principles of living greatly and bravely lie hidden in their ability to face difficulties with humility and accept the truth without being over smart. The course of failures replaces your fool-self, that blindly shouts ‘I’m so amazing’, by humility which silently makes you smart and strong to go the extra mile. If it fails to do so, then you live insecure about your inadequacies and humility has no relationship with insecurities or inadequacies.
So it is your failure that teaches you to embrace humility to feel tranquility of heart.

Pursue your passion

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Whoever you are – a student, a businessman, a musician, an athlete – if you are not a man of your passion, you simply are a man of buried force and possibility. Consistent failures don’t always mean you have to be patient, or success will arrive to you one day, it can also be a hint that you are not going for your passion. Recognize it first, then, it does not matter how much struggle you are to undergo or how many times you fail because at the end of the day, you will be the winner.
Greatness lies in pursuing your own dreams, understanding your own plan and walking on your own path; and not by chasing someone else’s dreams or footsteps.
“Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.” Henri Frederic Amiel

Necessity of a proper planning

Time is the most accessible and common thing to be wasted. Failure poses a question ‘Do you have a perfect planning?’ Through prototyping or architecting and researching your plan, you are actually visualizing and experiencing the way to reaching your destination. Planning and speed together breed the momentum, inspire to stay focused, fight the difficulties, embrace failures, endure the pain to win. It is failure that assists you in figuring out the well-planned and thought out vision.
“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” – Stephen A. Brennan

Faith
If you are truly familiar with the virtues of failure, then you realize that it does not take your guts and spirit out of your soul; it rather puts strong faith and perseverance in your devotion for passion. Faith, as a result of failures, strengthens your potential, prepares you to go beyond your defined boundary, whispers you for one more try when ‘Give Up’ stands in front of you demanding your courage, lighting up your true knowledge within the heart to lead you to the achievement.
“When you are on the edge of ‘Darkness’ and ‘Despair’ is about to knock you down, don’t give up, your faith will raise you up as the brightest hope to fly you to ocean of possibilities.” Don’t believe only in the facts, lengthen it by having faith in invisible potential in you.
             
Retain your success
Success is not permanent; it is a consistent process that has to be continued. Failures teach you not to rest on your success to fall again. Keep moving and looking for the process to ensure your success lasts longer. Anyone can be successful for a variety of reasons- for sheer luck, by hard-work, persistence or replicating success of successful persons- but retaining it is the greatest challenge. Failure will always be there to remind you to rest on the process of persistence itself, not on the pause of success. So the lesson learnt is ‘success is fragile and fallible and your greatness is in retaining success and not in one time success’.

Be Creative

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Failure makes you innovative. It cultivates the habit of experimenting, failing, getting up and starting once again with fresh idea and clear vision. It lets you play with various imaginary thoughts and come out with the most viable idea and extend the boundaries of possibilities from well-established facts and together they make you creative.
A series of experiments might go in vain or appear of no significance; nevertheless, don’t ever stop experimenting because that’s how you discover your path, invent things and become creative. The greatest scientist ever Thomas Alva Edison failed thousands of time but he never stopped experimenting.

Be Strong

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It’s failure that builds up your ‘Never Give Up’ attitude. It teaches you to paddle your own way across the ocean of troubles. It motivates you to keep running until you reach the goal, traverse the wild road and desert, and climb up the cliffs of mountain until you reach the pinnacle.
“Failure creates the path to success in return of your little courage, little more strength to endure the temporary pain and loss, and a little bit might to be still and steady.”
            
Bring value
Failure is an alternative route that lays a foundation of better understanding for a worth-while life; it is instructive that coaches you to make the significant choices of life. While going through lessons of failures, you become a man of value, a man of perseverance, discipline and strong attitude that together make your success more glorious.
Don’t disgrace the value of failure as falling intelligently is one of the greatest arts of life.

Conquer Yourself
Failures demand your persistence, commitment, consistent actions towards the accomplishment of your dream through which you learn to control your thoughts, know the mighty person dwelling inside, and eliminate jealousy, hatred, and selfishness. It ultimately makes you wise to have a better judgments and choices of life.
“It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.” Buddha

Written by:Mousumi Kumar Saha