What Is A Life Without A Little Failure?

Failure. A word that is more common than success and it’s not because F comes before S in the alphabet.

Failure is a word that has been instilled in us since birth. We failed to crawl before our mom’s best friend’s daughter (who later become the class president and a neurosurgeon). We failed to make the team, we failed to make the grades we needed to get into the best college and we failed to get the hottest guy in school to notice us.

The word failure seems to have only one meaning; not being good enough.

Have you ever received an “F” and thought, “How did this happen? I worked so hard?”. I wish we could get older and our failures could disappear with age but they seem to only grow larger.

Failure can come in multiple important aspects of our life. As an adult, now we say that we failed to get a mortgage loan, failed to get a promotion, failed to get pregnant, failed in a relationship or marriage. Failure is a constant reminder of what we wanted, but couldn’t get. What we worked for, but didn’t succeed in. Yet, what we fail to see is that life’s failures are what drives our successes. How boring would life be if we didn’t fail? I can guarantee everyone reading this is shaking their head saying, “I would love to succeed at everything and fail at nothing.” Me too but where’s the hard work in that? Failing is not fun. In fact, it’s heart-wrenching and downright cruel to our soul. You know what the fun part is? Beating our failure. After we fail, we go through the stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Do you see that word acceptance? Yes, that. As adults, the best part of failure is accepting it and kicking our own butts to make sure we succeed. Without failure, success wouldn’t consist of blood, sweat, and tears. It wouldn’t be as much fun if we didn’t fail and got everything handed to us. After all, life at the top wouldn’t be so shiny and bright if we didn’t know how dull and boring the bottom is. Although “f” comes before “s” in the alphabet, “A” for acceptance comes before F and changes our lives. Don’t be afraid to fail, because failure is what drives us.