Here's to your FAILURE!

You have to have darkness for light to have value. If it was light all the time then it would not have the importance it does, and the ability to see and the beauty of illumination would be taken for granted.?

Failure is not the opposite of success but rather the an essential precursor to success.?It is the background environment in which the flower of success starts to bud and blossom; much like a lotus in the swamp.?

Failure gives meaning to success. Failure is also fundamental to our development and to evolution itself. For example when we go to the gym and lift weights, we work hard to tire the muscle out to the point of failure. And it takes a lot of effort to reach that last 30 seconds where despite our full effort and intention the muscle just cannot lift anymore weight and it fails.?

It is when the muscle fails that it tears, and then as it repairs it grows back stronger and bigger. In much the same way to achieve growth and development at a personal level we must push ourselves to our limit, to failure.?

The lessons we learn from this are immensely profound:

(a) The role failure plays in our lives is strategic. It is not an enemy but rather a friend. Fall in love with the last 30 seconds, when it gets the most difficult. The more we experience failure and learn how to manage it, the less we fail as we develop. Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from making bad judgements.

(b) Growth only occurs on the boundary of support and challenge. In pushing our limits we grow our capacity to manage difficulty and obstacles. And thereby increase our likelihood for success. This ability compounds only if we understand the strategic value of failure.

(c) Failure is fundamental to evolution. We don’t fail when we lose, we fail when we refuse to try again. Winners do it one more time than everyone else, and that is what makes them winners. There is a Japanese idiom that says “fall seven, rise eight”. Simply put try, try and try till you succeed.?

(d) Our response to failure determines our capacity for success. Life does not seek our permission to send problems our way. The only thing we can choose is how to respond to such situations. And it is the response that determines the outcome. And the solution often lives within the problem itself.?

(e) Being comfortable with being uncomfortable is like a muscle. Individuals who are ok with failing more times than other people who even try, will achieve the highest success.?

(f) Success is never the outcome of a single decision, it requires consistently managing failure (which we get better at if we don’t stop trying). And while we only need to be right once (for the big breakthroughs or major decisions), becoming successful and staying successful, are two entirely different ball games.?

(g) Hard work and discipline are the cornerstones of success. They help you become successful. Smart work helps you stay successful and accelerate success. But you have to earn the right to work smart by first working immensely hard. The road to smart work is paved with hard work. We cannot put the cart before the horse. There is no successful person who did not have a difficult past.

In conclusion, once you understand the beauty of failure, you understand that it showed up in your life to redirect you to becoming the masterpiece you are meant to be.?

And by reading this article, failure has now lost its power to define you. The role it plays in your life now is only to fuel you to do better next time from a place of greater experience. From now on failure may fuel you but it can no longer paralyse you.

So here’s to your failure (for in it lies your success). Cheers!