WE LEARN MORE FROM FAILURE THAN FROM SUCCESS, SO FAIL AS OFTEN.

There is no success without failure. Let me put it differently; the sure way you are guaranteed to succeed is through the door of failure. Today, most people do not want to fail; most people strive not to make mistakes. Granted, it should not be obvious or on basic things. However, if you are ambitious enough, if you aim higher enough, you cannot avoid making mistakes with eternal lessons that propel you to the success you so crave for. Carl Jung summarized it beautifully when he said; “The fool is the precursor to the saviour.” If you want to reach the level of being the go-to person (the saviour); if you want to succeed, then you must consider yourself a fool to learn. And this indubitably comes with making mistakes – you must fail.

It is amazing how people fear failure these days. How shall you succeed on this path? That is the problem, we work excruciatingly hard to avoid failure than to succeed. Failure is considered fatal, so everyone you meet is playing it safe. Everyone wants to be reasonable. The problem is, reasonable people just do reasonably well. You cannot succeed driving with the gear of being reasonable. It is the same gear of avoiding failure at all costs. The majority of people today are driving on this gear, that’s why we have a copy-paste generation – a bunch of sameness.

My greatest lessons so far in life have come from my mistakes and trust me I have a good share of them – even those considered fatal. I strive my best to make only original mistakes, not to repeat the past mistake because that would mean I never learnt. Of course, there are things I would never have wished to learn through mistakes but I also think I would not have considered them serious learning lessons had they been taught theoretically. Ultimately, I have become better and wiser with my failures; I have achieved greater success after my mistakes. History as well is replete with profound failure stories of some of the best this humanity has produced. Let us look at some of them:

1. Steve Jobs:

Started off a company with two men in a garage. Years later it became a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. Yet Jobs was unbelievably fired from the company he began. This propelled ventures such as NeXT and Pixar that eventually led Jobs back to the CEO position at Apple. This is what he had to say; “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to me.”

2. Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln was no stranger to rejection and failure. Failed in business, even suffering a nervous breakdown. Got defeated in a run for president in 1856. He refused to give up and stop trying his best. He got elected in 1861 as president. This is what he had to say; “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”

3. Michael Jordan

It is undoubted that it is years of hard work, practice and failure that made this basketball star that we know today. In fact, at some point early on in his career, he was not considered tall enough. He summarised his journey beautifully; “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 winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

4. Albert Einstein

Could not speak fluently until the age of nine. Was expelled from school due to his rebellious nature. Was refused admission to Zurich polytechnic school. Yet we consider him today the father of intelligence who won the Nobel Prize award in Physics in 1921. He had this to say; “Success is failure in progress.”

Listen, if you want to succeed then you must be willing to fail. There is no success without failure – there has not been any and there will be none. Be content with making mistakes. It is the road to success.

Adios!

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