Success, A Sum of Failures Without Loss of Momentum!

In January I had the pleasure of attending a workshop by Hayet Rida. The workshop was about failure and learning how to embrace it. She began the workshop activity by getting us all to state our names and thereafter indicate what we are a failure at. I remember just looking at the post-it and wondering what are am I failures, or better yet which ones am I willing to own. I felt it would have been a much easier exercise for me to write down my success but at that moment I recognised that I needed to work on owning my failures, and embracing them just as I do with my successes.

As soon as I identified my failure and owned it, I realised that if I got the opportunity to remove it from my life not only would it change my character but the people I have met as a result of that failure. In that instance, it became easier to appreciate the value of my failure and it led me to be just as excited to fail as I am to succeed.

The world we live in has ingrained in us the need to only celebrate our successes and we are often castrated by society when we do fail. Take for example if a girl gets A's in her GCSEs everyone will come and celebrate her, she might even make it in the newspaper but never is there a time we would do that for someone who failed their GCSEs. So although this is not a born trait but a learned trait that has led us to innately only be willing to make noise about our wins, sadly in doing so we fail to see the value of how failure has equally shaped us.

One is not a success for only doing what is right and what works, but one is a success for still continuing to figure out the winning formula despite the failures made. Success is indeed a sum of failures without loss of momentum! So it is important that we make time to try out this exercise of naming your failures and identifying what they have taught you, so you can see the value they have in your story of success.