Why its OK to fail

We’re all scared of the big “F” word – “Failure”. Our schools, colleges, societies have taught us that failure is bad and not to settle for it. So we try and sneak out every way of succeeding even if sometimes we cross boundaries of ethics, friendship, slander, integrity and the like.

Here are my top 10 reasons why I think it’s alright to fail “sometimes”

1. Failure makes you strong. Yup, it’s true. After you’ve been punched around, you will spring back like those knock-me-down inflatable toys
2. “To err is Human”. Failure does make us realize that we’re not perfect and that there’s lots more for us to do in the journey called life
3. Sometimes too much of success can go to your head and a failure can zip you down back on earth
4. With failure there’s only one way and that’s up. So after failure, you will only start succeeding again
5. The taste of success after failure is much sweeter, because you really tried.
6. Failure gives you a reason of how “not” to do something and makes you want to think of other creative, logical and fun ways of doing this. It was Thomas Edition who said “I have not failed. I've just found 10000 ways that won't work”
7. Failure will make you start taking more changes, going into the unknown and exploring yourself. You’ll go – “Damn, this didn’t work for me, let me try this approach”, or “why don’t I give up this for that”
8. You will stop becoming afraid of failing. Just a word of caution here. This doesn’t mean one gets used to failure and hence gets complacent.
9. Failure evolves you. If you fail, you get a new job, if you fail – you take a new course that interests you and do well, if you fail in one sport you do well in another, if you fail in a relationship – you learn move on and find something more fulfilling
10. Failure is inevitable. Everyone single one of us has and will continue to fail in some way or another

Here are some failures:

• Albert Einstein - Einstein did not speak until he was four and did not read until he was seven, causing his teachers and parents to think he was mentally handicapped, slow and anti-social. Eventually, he was expelled from school.
• Soichiro Honda - The billion-dollar business that is Honda began with a series of failures. Honda was turned down by Toyota Motor Corporation for a job after interviewing for a job as an engineer, leaving him jobless for quite some time.
• Bill Gates - dropped out of Harvard and started a failed first business with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen called Traf-O-Data.
• Amitabh Bachchan – His career tanked along with his production house, Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited (ABCL). He went bankrupt. His meteoric rise and quick downfall is a true Bollywood tale within Bollywood.
• Charlie Chaplin - but his act was initially rejected by Hollywood studio chiefs because they felt it was a little too nonsensical to ever sell.
• Steven Spielberg - he was rejected from the University of Southern California School of Theater, Film and Television three times.
• Ratan Tata - When Ratan Tata became the chairman in 1991, his futuristic views and liberal attitude did not go well with some. At the very start of his career as chairman, two companies under him faced bankruptcy and his employees’ faith in him dwindled. The Tata Nano project is also looked at as one of his failures.