Fall five times, get up at six: Why we need to fail at some things in life

Introduction

Shy and timid, she walks into my office with her mother. Two weeks before visiting my clinic, she was admitted to our hospital following a failed suicide attempt. Fortunately, it was just a scare, but the damage was already done. Both her parents and siblings were traumatized by the incident. You could still notice the mother's anxiety and worry as they proceeded to take their seats in front of me.

So, as the story goes, the young 15-year-old girl, was rushed to hospital after school because she had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. She had just seen the result of a school exam she took, and her score was 2.6 out of 10. The girl was shocked and disappointed with the result. Because of the intense shame she felt, she decided that the best thing to do was end her life. She could not dare to face her mother with this poor result because high grades were expected from her. Moreover, she felt strongly that her mother was never satisfied with her grades.

Sitting in front of me, head bowed and staring at the floor, I noticed her fidgeting with her hands. I calmed her down and decided to tell her a story:

My Story

I took her back to my third year in medical school when things were rough and a period when my father (now deceased) and I were not on the best terms. At the time, my studies were buckling under the pressure of the challenges I was facing, and on this specific occasion, we had just finished an “in-course” exam in physiology. I knew I had performed poorly on the test and was not expecting high scores. Traditionally, after such tests, the printed scores of our results are unceremoniously pasted on a scoreboard open for everyone to see. Everybody then searches for their scores, which are placed next to our matriculation numbers, and no names are listed. The moment we are informed our scores are posted, we all swarm to the scoreboard, like bees swarming towards honey, to find out how we performed. So, on this occasion, I went to the scoreboard to check my results and met several students there already. While I was eagerly waiting for my turn to see my result, one of my classmates suddenly laughed out loud. She said, “Can you believe this? Someone scored three out of a hundred (3%), hahaha”. She and a couple of students began to laugh. As I approached the scoresheet, I discovered that the “someone” she was talking about was me. The humiliation of being laughed at and the disappointment of failing was so intense that I broke down in tears. Of course, she did not know that it was my score, which she was laughing at. Many years later, I told the colleague this story. While she was unaware of the impact of her behavior back then, she apologized nonetheless for what happened.

The Insight

So, back to the young girl in my clinic. As I shared this story, I noticed I had caught her attention. She was now sitting up straight and staring at me. Then I went on to tell her,

“Young girl, trust me, I know what failure means; I have experienced many of these situations in life. I know what it means to score the lowest grades and be the last in class, to be laughed at and humiliated by others. I also know and have experienced the fear of disappointing my parents. But look at it from this angle: you scored 2.6 out of 10, but in my case, I scored 3 out of 100. Yet, today, here I am in front of you as a doctor. Imagine if I had committed suicide then; would we be having this conversation today?”

She looked at me with teary eyes, shook her head, and said no. As I wrapped up my story, the young girl began to weep. The mother embraced her daughter, and witnessing their shared pain and love was a moving sight. A mother wanting the best for her daughter (having been denied the opportunity to finish school herself) and the daughter misconstruing the mother's intentions and nearly ending her life out of desperation!

The Message:

As they stood up to leave, I left her with these parting words

“if you don't fail at something, you'll never succeed in anything. See failure as an opportunity to learn. Embrace it, learn from it, and accept that you will always fail at something. Fall down five times, get up at six, but always believe in yourself no matter what.”