There is a saying that failure is a stepping stone for Success. But many are so afraid of failing, as they are not ready to face the consequences. If one is not ready to face consequences of a failure, then how it can become a stepping stone for success? Many of them have ideas but due to the fear of failure, they never put the idea into motion.
The question is whether failure can be bypassed? The answer is no.
There are many entrepreneurs who have not succeeded in their first attempt of starting a new business. There are many well established businesses that had a great start have closed down. That does not mean that the person who was running those businesses will stop and will not start another one; may be some will not, due to fear of another such failure or something other reason. But many will continue to create new businesses as they know failure is a stepping stone for success over long run.
In this article, I am will attempt to unravel the idea about failure.
PROCESS OF FAILURE
Michael Jordan is one of the best basketball players of all time. He attributes his success to many failures because he has claimed they made him try even harder. It is said that, when he was very young, he was not even thought to have a great talent. He was not part of the high school basketball team. Michael claims that he has counted the failures like 300 lost games and 26 times missed taking the game winning shot. Most champions are discouraged and unmotivated by failures but Michael Jordan had the right attitude and regarded them as the recipe for his success.
There are many such successful personals who have failed but never gave up and never feared about failure. They took it as either a challenge or motivation or a reason to try harder for the next opportunity. Failure in inevitable when you want to succeed and even after you succeed failure may continue due to different circumstances. It is important to note that failure is not the end. If Michael Jordon thought it is the end of his basketball career when his missed first game winning shot or when he lost the first game, he would never become a best player of all time. As Denis Waitely says, failure is a delay, i.e., it is a phase in your journey where you need to relook what went wrong, how to correct it, what precautions to be taken the next time and how to adjust to this phase and come out of it. Irrespective of many planning, brainstorming sessions, suggestions from others, following best practices, there will be a phase of failure because it is inevitable while achieving something.
So, failure is part of the process of executing a project, running a business, becoming an entrepreneur, becoming a successful athlete, becoming what you like to do.
FAILURE IS WAY FORWARD
Every one, know about surfers. They love to surf in big waves and enjoy that moment they have been waiting for. This, they do even though they know that some of waves will make them to fall. But they never give up, they never stop. They go back to the beach every morning, afternoon, evening no matter how often they fall. Every time they fall, it gives them more motivation to challenge them to stay in the wave as long as possible. Every time they succeed, they want to do more because they love the waves, the challenges, the thrilling experience and joy.
Let’s look this analogy with any entrepreneur — every time you make a decision, if you fail, should you stop or keep going back to face challenge and win. Let’s not confuse ourselves between many failures versus a defeat. A failure is possible every time you want to do something, similar to how a surfer knows that he is going to crash for some of the waves. But continuing the journey to achieve what you want is similar to a surfer going back to water even after falling several times.
Another analogy is playing video games. Most of us would have played video games. Do you finish a game level in one go? may be, may not be; at least you would have crashed or fallen or caught up with the enemy once, before learning how to avoid it. So, you wouldn’t have completed a particular level without failing at least once. Every time you fail, you learn how not to fail the next time you play the same level. So, isn’t is obvious, failing is the way forward! Something to think about, isn’t it?
FAILURE / SUCCESS PARADOX
It is said that we learn more from failure than success. If we must succeed in everything we do then we lower the bar of the definition of success, so that the failure can be avoided instead of aiming for excellence and we stop taking risks. The taking risk attitude will be discouraged and then the things that are failing will be hidden as no one wants to be associated with failure. If we really want to succeed then, the goals should be changed. One can succeed in a large picture, if you are prepared to take smaller risks and learn from them, allowing you to get more and more successful by building on the learning got by failing.
There are somethings are safe to fail and somethings which are unsafe to fail. Everyone gets so paranoid about the unsafe to fail situations that they ignore the ones that are safe to fail. If it is safe to fail then why not take a risk to fail and acquire some knowledge and it may also help in better understanding a problem. If you make, safe to fail experiments small, you can do lots of them, and many of them will fail. If you want to get those big gains, allow yourself to make it okay to fail. Don’t get fixated on success, and make yourself afraid of failure. Plan the failure properly, so that you can acquire knowledge from it.
So, if you understand the paradox of failure and success, then there is merit in it. And if you apply the paradox correctly then success can be achieved in the bigger context of your goals.
Failure itself is relative. Failure is part of the process of achieving success. It is important to embrace it rather than being afraid of it and not doing anything about it. Your expectations may not be same as what you want to achieve right at that moment, but you would have seen the process of how did you get where you are rather than where you wanted to be. If you carefully analyse and understand what went wrong or what can be done to get where your intentions are, then you will reach the goal in a larger picture. Unless you realize that the failure is part of the process, then you will end up not doing anything and you will fail by not doing anything.
Remember that failure is the way forward, remember the surfers. For them falling in rough sea is the motivation to go back out there. A surfer will never become a true surfer if that person is afraid to fall and associate with failure. If the motivation to go back to sea even after failing several time and without learning from those falls, the surfer cannot learn to surf. This applies to any sport, anybody who want to learn a new language, start a business, becoming a freelancer.
So, go out there and start doing something, plan your failures to learn or acquire knowledge, detect the problems early and aim for success and excellence by taking smaller risk and failing safe.
