Go Ahead and Fail
In a world that rewards success, who would advise people to fail? We have all been conditioned to win, in school exams, competitions, running races, and art exhibitions. Schools proudly display long lists of “achievers,” with grades starting from 99.99% and going downward, often only up to 95%.
So, what about everyone else? Are their lives doomed if they score below 90%? Then those who score even lower must be in absolute misery.
A quick look around shows the opposite. Grades, awards, and trophies do not define our personality, success, or achievements later in life. Although nobody likes failure, it remains one of life’s greatest teachers. As the old saying goes, “Failures are the stepping stones to success”.
Get Kuldeep S’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Nobody goes through life without experiencing failure in one form or another. Failure is not limited to school grades or sports. Studies show that at least 25% of entrepreneurs experience failure before building a successful business. Around 80% of small businesses fail within the first five years because of factors such as cash-flow shortages, poor planning, weak management, low demand, and countless other challenges.
- Bill Gates’s venture Traf-O-Data failed because municipalities offered similar traffic data services for free.
- Arianna Huffington faced rejection from nearly 40 publishers before launching The Huffington Post.
- J. K. Rowling saw her Harry Potter manuscript rejected by 12 publishers because they believed stories about witches, wizards, and magic were outdated. Her life changed after Bloomsbury Publishing agreed to publish Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
The list of people who failed before achieving great success is endless. The underlying message is simple: it is okay to fail. It is perfectly normal to make mistakes. Sometimes, we make serious blunders because of gullibility, ignorance, or impatience. Life is a powerful teacher. Only when we recover from the setbacks and shocks that failure brings do we discover our true strength.
I remember my son’s tennis tournament when he was around seven or eight years old. He won the first round. It may surprise many people to know that I actually wanted him to lose the next round. At that age, tournaments are not life-changing events. Losing a game can teach humility and resilience better than constant victories. As expected, he lost, but it gave us an opportunity to encourage him to treat the defeat as a challenge and improve further.
It is okay to score less. Not winning the first prize is not the end of life. Rejections, even after applying for 100 jobs, do not diminish our abilities. Losing a business or a customer is painful, but it also pushes us to introspect, adapt, and find new ways to rise again.
