Word of the Week

Failure

Definition: an act or instance of failing or proving unsuccessful; lack of success

Consider this...

I promise you that this Word of the Week will be less depressing than it sounds.

Failure is something that many people fear. Failure means that they didn’t accomplish their goal, that they didn’t get what they wanted, that they’re going to have to, potentially, start all over or rethink everything, and so much more besides.

Most people hate the idea of failure.

But you know what, failure’s not all bad.

I just read something that kind of annoyed me because I thought that it was trite. It said that we don’t learn as much from our successes as our failures because our failures force us to reflect on what went wrong.

Ugh, I thought. Trite!

But here I am repeating it to you! Why? Because however hackneyed the notion is (and trying to pass it off as an original thought was what was more annoying, I suppose), it remains true. We do learn more from failure.

I’ll give you an example. I recently failed, in the traditional sense, on a business trip. I didn’t accomplish what was ostensibly the primary goal: sell something. But I wasn’t upset about this at all, I found, because what I learned going through this experience was invaluable - and certainly worth more than the value of the sale.

Not blinded by my joy at having succeeded, I analyzed everything about the situation and drafted an extensive document cataloging all the ways to have greater success in the future. Since this will be valuable the next hundred plus times I’m in that situation, future situations - many of them - will be different. The aggregate of those successes will certainly surpass this single “failure.”

I’m not saying that failure is better, but I am saying that the platitudinous notion here holds: we learn more from failure.

So the next time you fail, I’m not saying revel in it. What I am saying is look on the bright side and learn from it.