There’s something so innately scary about failure, especially to us Indians. We’ve had it drilled into us that failure is something so despicable that will disappoint our parents to an extent that we cannot recover from it. What’s fascinating about why we fear failure is not because we believe it to be humiliating, but because it seems so final to us at that moment. We don’t fear failure when you think about it. We fear our supposed inability to recuperate from it, which simply isn’t true. We all bounce back. And I don’t say it to be empathetic to people going through tough times. It’s actually because we all do bounce back. Else none of us would be where we are. Survival requires us to bounce back from whatever setback we face.
Now that we can agree on the fact that our dread of failure in itself is unwarranted, we can move on to what I want to talk about. It’s not rocket science that if you are successful, irrespective of the field you’re in, you must have faced various defeats before succeeding. But what might go unnoticed is how that specific moment of collapse is what made one succeed. This is not an article on me lecturing you how to get over your downfalls. This is to emphasize the importance of failure, and how it’s not just an inevitability but also a necessity.
We need to fail, we need to face trials and challenges, we need life to kick us when we’re down, we need losses, we need despair, we need to be pushed beyond our saturation point and when we find a moment to catch our breath, life will go at it all over again. This specific period when the blue devils take over your every thought, that’s when you find the strength to forge ahead. Every successful person would tell you that right before their life took a turn for the better, there was a moment where they took massive strides when it felt like they were destined to fail.
We've all heard the infamous story of Thomas Edison saying that he didn't fail a 1000 times before creating the electric light bulb but the creation of an electric light bulb required 1000 steps to get there. It's cheesy, overused and has become a sort of cliche. But where we, as a generation, have gone wrong is that we've started divorcing ourselves from the conversation of success stories, as if it's something only Thomas Edison could achieve. Mind you, I'm not saying that everyone could have invented the electric light bulb, but I'm merely pointing out success was always a thousand step process for us all. Some of us just abandoned it when we reached 200.
There really isn't a right or wrong way to deal with any kind of failure. There's only one rule - deal with it. Accept that it has happened and let yourself experience the full emotional impact of the failure. Learn from the experience but if there's nothing to be learned from it, just learn to leave it behind. There are reports that show that talking about failures can be crucial for growth. Researchers say how resilient and diligent you remain during those moments is seen to be directly linked to your ability to grow and empower yourself and others.
So, all in all, failure doesn't have to be this big blob of negative energy that you are terrified will never leave your side. In a country, where failure is not understood or even looked as a necessary tool for progress, eventual accomplishments aren't given the due credit they deserve because of it. And as a generation that's coming to be more and more open-minded, we have to do better, be better and look at our failures as nothing but pieces of wisdom that are collected on the road to success. That way, not only do we become versatile but also hopeful, not only we realize that it’s not just ineludible but imperative to our success.
Authored by Divya Babu
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