When it comes to failure, most of us wish to be the furthest from it possible, and understandably so. Socially, we have been conditioned to perceive failure as negative, consequential, and disappointing, so it isn’t terribly difficult to decipher why we carry the notions we do toward failure, prior to even engaging with it.
We associate success with positivity, therefore failure must be affiliated with negativity. Right?
Wrong.
In a general sense, failure isn’t something we should aspire to achieve, but it certainly is not something we should be so terrified of. When I was a child, my parents got me this decorative plaque-thing to put on my dresser in my room. It read ‘Failure is not falling down. It is choosing not to get up again,’ and I’ve never forgotten it. That plaque stayed in my childhood bedroom until I went to university; it was with me through all five years of post-secondary education, and the same plaque is now in the home I share with my husband. It is a mantra I truly try to live by, and that does not mean I’m seeking out failure in my daily life; rather, I am choosing not to view failure as a purely malevolent concept, and instead view it as an opportunity to learn, grow, and improve upon past mistakes.
Without failure, we really don’t have anything to compare or measure our successes to. Failure provides ample opportunity to take a step back from a situation and assess it in a manner differently than we did before; without it, we are strangers to setbacks and challenges, as well as difficulties, and going through life without encountering any of these forces is entirely unrealistic, and not overly helpful in the context of personal growth and maturity, either.
Failure is perceived as an unwanted occurrence, but it really shouldn’t be, so long as you go about it with the right mindset.
Photo by the blowup on Unsplash
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