The Truth Is We’re All Failures (And That’s Okay)

Accepting failure is one of the toughest pills to swallow in life. The times where you thought something was so certain just to come up short is one of the most devastating of blow you could ever feel. It can make it seem like dreams are nothing more than hopeless aspirations, and everything that you’ve been scratching and clawing for doesn’t seem worth it anymore. The worst of it all, failure doesn’t just come in and leaves our lives. It comes in these unrelenting waves that pound against our goals making it harder and harder to get to them. With all that failure it’s easy to just stop swimming. It gets easy to just let yourself drown in the failure and wallow in your “worthlessness”.

Here’s a fact of life, though: failure is certain. From the successful doctors and businessmen to the artist and writers of the world, all of them have experienced failure in some capacity in their lifetime. Everyone is bound to be a failure. We fail in our personal lives and relationships. We fail at school when it becomes too overwhelming. We fail at our jobs when we push ourselves too much to the point where we crash and burn. It is simply unavoidable.

What makes people successful then? How can we have winners in this world when everyone is plagued by failure? It’s the simple fact that failure may be inevitable, but it doesn’t define who we are as people. How we react to the failure is what actually defines us as people. Our character and outlook are shaped and molded by how we handle the failure. Those who succeed don’t let the failures defeat them. They don’t let the constant knockdowns become overwhelming, but instead they use them to their advantage.

We give out what we take from the world. If you take failure at face value as something that’s just around to make life complicated and get in the way, then yes you will end up a permanent failure. If you look at failure in a different light you can see them more as learning experiences. Failure can be nothing more than just a happy hiccup on your journey to doing something truly great. The Einsteins and Jobs of the world never let failure become the final product. They saw their vision in their mind, and the failures that happened along the way were turned into opportunities to make that final achievement all the more sweeter. I know this seems like an overly optimistic approach to failure, but you almost have to be that way if you don’t want it to defeat you. You don’t have to be defined by your failures if you’re not willing to settle for anything less than what you think you’re worth.

So keep failing. Fail over and over again. These failures will teach you not only about your goals but also about who you are as a person. Are you going to be the type to roll over on their bellies and let the world kick you while you’re down, or are you gonna dust the cobwebs off and be damned if you sell yourself short? All that is entirely up to you, just know that deep down we are all a bunch of failures.