Don’t Ever Be Afraid to Fail

I think one of the biggest problems that this country faces at this moment is our obsession with success. Make no mistake, success is great. When you succeed, you “win”. It feels great. But you have to remember that failure is just as important. Success is your way of knowing you’re doing things right, just as failure is a sign that you need a change. So don’t be afraid – when you fail, it’s one of your best chances to grow.

When you fail, you are presented with a unique opportunity, and a set of choices. The unique opportunity is a chance for unparalleled growth. The choice is simple. One path is to be ashamed of your failure, and to let it hold you back. The other is to accept your failure, and to learn from it. Really, failure is how we learn, period. When we do things right, or mostly right, things usually go well, and so we keep on doing things that way. When we fail, we learn not to do it that way, but instead back up and try another path or angle. You learn to walk by falling down a thousand times. You learn to ride a bike by toppling over a thousand times (maybe more in my case). You learn a new language by getting words wrong a thousand times. It’s through all of these failures that you can eventually move forward into success.

A problem with success is complacency. Without growth you remain the same, and stagnate. You can actually lose your ability to move forward and advance. Also, sometimes a change early can mean better results later. The best illustration of this is actually chicken pox. If you get chicken pox early, as a child, the results are small, a week of discomfort. But if this very same disease is contracted later in life, the results can be many times more serious. Of course I mean this as a metaphor – not just applying to diseases, but instead to all your decisions in life.

Of course all of this comes with one caveat – please don’t go out and try to fail. That really won’t help you out – changing what you’re doing when you’re doing things right won’t help you out at all. Just remember to go out and live life to its fullest. Don’t be afraid to succeed or fail. Get out there and squeeze all you can out of life – you’re worth it!