Fail You Must. History Is Full Of People Who Failed & Bounced Back

Make failure a part of your daily conversations, as that is the only sure-shot way of achieving real success in your personal and professional life.

Failure is difficult. Success is easy. Sounds a little weird right? I bet you are tempted to ask, isn’t achieving success difficult?

Let me explain. For a long time, we have been trained to think that success is difficult to achieve. Our brains have been conditioned to only think about being successful. From the time we start school to our working lives, if there is only a single mantra that has been bombarded into our ears, it is to be successful.

Let me correct that — it is to be “very successful.” Nothing wrong with that at all. After all, who doesn’t want to be the chosen one?

And for that, you have to work hard, play all the right moves, make big sacrifices, swim with the sharks, face disappointments and rejections, and maybe even look up to the sky for some heavenly intervention. All this leads us to believe that achieving success is immensely difficult.

But hold on here for a moment. Let’s walk a little bit on the other side of the beach now.

Even when you have failed, haven’t you taken a lot of effort, made sacrifices, swam with the sharks, moved mountains, faced disappointments and rejections along the way? This is also difficult as hell and is far worse.

Not only did you put everything at stake but you also failed. Life then starts to suck in the most extraordinary way.!

At this moment, you have a choice to make — either Retreat or March on. Because only when we march ahead, then success starts advancing towards you.

It’s when you rise up to face your failures, you are in a way getting ready to be a success. It's really simple, if you have not failed enough, you are not going to achieve greatness.

Our history is marked with all such individuals who took failures in their stride, brushed aside their disappointments, and carried on to fail again.

Some of these individuals went to achieve greatness, not because they were great by birth or their education, but because they simply chose to rise up for every single time they fell.

Let us look at some individuals who marched on to achieve success —

Abraham Lincoln — As a young man, he went to war as a Captain and returned a Private. Afterward, he was a failure as a Businessman. As a lawyer in Springfield, he was too impractical and temperamental to be a success.

He turned to politics and was defeated in his first try for the Legislature, again defeated in his first attempt to be nominated for Congress, defeated in his application to be Commissioner of the General Land Office, defeated in the Senatorial Election of 1854, defeated in his efforts for the Vice-Presidency in 1856, and defeated in the Senatorial Election of 1858.

At about that time, he wrote in a letter to a friend, “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth.”

Charles Darwin — gave up a medical career and was told by his father, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching.”

In his autobiography, Darwin wrote, “I was considered by all my masters and my father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect.” Clearly, he evolved.

Harrison Ford — After Harrison Ford’s first performance as a hotel bellhop in the film Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round, the studio vice-president called him into his office.

“Sit down kid,” the Studio Head said, “I want to tell you a story. The first time Tony Curtis was ever in a movie he delivered a bag of groceries. We took one look at him and knew he was a movie star.” Ford replied, “I thought you were supposed to think that he was a grocery delivery boy.”

The Vice President dismissed Ford with “You ain’t got it kid, you ain’t got it … now get out of here.”

Winston Churchill — repeated a grade during Elementary school and, when he entered Harrow, was placed in the lowest division of the lowest class. Later, he twice failed the entrance exam to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.

He was defeated in his first effort to serve in Parliament. He became Prime Minister at the age of 62.

He later wrote, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never, Never, Never, Never give up.”

Thomas Edison’s — teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything.” He was fired from his first two jobs for being “non-productive.”

As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”

Steve Jobs — Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.

“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’

So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, “Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.”

Albert Einstein — did not speak until he was 4-years-old and did not read until he was 7. His parents thought he was “sub-normal,” and one of his teachers described him as “mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams.”

He was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School. He did eventually learn to speak and read. Even to do a little math.

Michael Jordan — was cut from his High School Basketball team. He came back with a vengeance and an unparalleled work ethic to clinch 6 NBA Championships for Chicago Bulls.

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 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. That is why I succeed.”

Walt Disney — was fired by a newspaper editor because “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” He went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.

In fact, the proposed park was rejected by the city of Anaheim on the grounds that it would only attract riffraff.

Beatles — Decca Records turned down a recording contract with the Beatles with the un-prophetic evaluation, “We don’t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on their way out.”

After Decca rejected the Beatles, Columbia records followed suit.

Elvis Presley — In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired Elvis Presley after one performance.

He told Presley, “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.”

J.K. Rowling — 12 publishers rejected J.K. Rowling’s book about a boy wizard before a small London house picked up Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. That book went on to sell in excess of 120 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best selling books of all time

J.K Rowling is credited with selling more than 500 million copies of the Harry Potter book series

Beethoven — handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him “hopeless as a composer.”

And, of course, you know that he wrote five of his greatest Symphonies while completely deaf.

Failing Is One Of The Best Ways to Learn How To Win

The people who achieve the most, in whatever way they choose to define their achievement, are those who take risks and fail along the way. And this was the one single trait that made all these individuals achieve greatness

The trouble, though with most of us, is the fear of failure. It’s scary to want something deeply, to try something new, and to risk not experiencing the outcome you hoped for. You risk disappointment and embarrassment. You set yourself up to experience hurt. You make yourself vulnerable to feelings that aren’t always comfortable.

The lessons that come from accepting failures with grace and tenacity are what provide you with the emotional strength and courage to take big risks. You should absolutely pat yourself on the back for every failure you experience — assuming you use it as a building block to becoming a stronger person, rather than a crutch or a burden of guilt that prevents you from continuing on.

Everyone makes mistakes, experiences failure; but instead of owning up to missteps and seeking ways to try, try again, we play the blame game or explain away all the reasons why that failure wasn’t really our fault or within our control.

And you know what? Sometimes that’s true. There are, of course, some instances where you have no control over circumstances or outcomes. But what is in your control, is your attitude and response towards that failure. You can’t pass the buck here. Chin up and move on.

No one wants to fail or face disappointments. But that’s not how the real world operates. You try, you fall. Sometimes you try and try, still, you will fall. Does it mean that you don’t try again? Just look at a child learning to walk and count the number of times the child falls. Does she give up and say — “I am not going to try to walk anymore?”

Make Failure Stories Part Of Your Conversations

We forget that all of us are born with internal wiring to face setbacks and challenges, just that we lose our way as we grow up and stop getting up after our fall. We don’t dig into our in-built mechanism to rise up.

Add to that, the worst thing is that no one talks about failing while you are growing up. It's like the worst taboo as if one would catch the plague by even uttering the word “failure” in any social or formal conversation.

Neither the school systems nor the universities that are supposedly designed to prepare you for the real world teach the importance of failing. These systems do not prepare you for failures, as their only motto is to get through the program with the most polished and sophisticated minds, which in turn bring in new students to fill up their campuses.

And what we end up having is these sharp and enthusiastic minds, that remain continue to remain oblivious to the challenging scenarios that unfold in the real world. It's like everyone is neatly packaged and presented to the outside world in this “bubble of invincibility”, something like the Midas touch until you hit a wall. (However, some students at MIT took an initiative last year to organize a FAIL conference to de-stigmatize failure and build resilience)

Heck, we even don’t talk about failures in our home environments. The only conversations that take place around the dinner table are about success stories, but not about failure stories. Why don’t we glorify failures as much as we do about successful experiences?

Is it because we fear that, if we talk about failures, it is will reflect poorly on us or that we are too superstitious that talking about failures will actually lead to a failure. If that is the case, then talking about success stories, should make you a successful person, right?

Final Thoughts

To achieve success, the only thing that works is to pick yourself up, dust off the disappointment, and march on just like all these individuals did to get to their goals. Remember every step that you take is only going to take you forward to achieving your goal. For that, YOU should be willing to take that step.

Failures teach us something very important — that losing doesn’t make you a loser and that failing doesn’t make you a failure. It actually gets you ready to take that next step and face another day. So, don’t get left behind because you are afraid of moving forward.

Everyone has their favorite quotes. Mine is actually from the movie Cars 3 when Lightning McQueen is down and beat, and Cruz Ramirez tells him — “Don’t Fear Failure. Be Afraid of Not Having the Chance. You Have The Chance”

No one is great by birth or education, greatness comes from simply deciding to rise up every single time you fall. And fall you will.