Why Success Starts with Failure

How’s your relationship with failure? To achieve success in our fast paced world, failure is really a requirement to success. Simply put, if you’re not failing, then you’re not growing.

Now nobody is perfect and no doubt we have all experienced failure in our lives. Heck, I have certainly had my share of mistakes and I am still making them. What I’ve learnt throughout my journey, is that it’s what we make failure mean that determines our level of progress, growth and learning.

Failure is Your Key to Success

Consider a baby learning how to walk. How many times does a baby attempt to stand and walk on their own? If this baby viewed failure as some adults do, it would never learn how to walk.

Most people think of failure and success separately when in fact they are closely linked. They see it as a choice between failure and success when in fact you need to experience failure and setbacks in order to achieve success.        

“I haven’t failed. I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work” Thomas Edison

I love this quote by Thomas Edison. It demonstrates a level of maturity in his thinking around learning, by viewing failure as simply an event that’s happened, and not a reflection of who we are.

Failure should be a lesson that we learn from. It should teach us about what we can do differently next time. It’s about seeing failure as stepping stones to becoming a better version of who you want to become.

Success is Your Destination. Failure is Your Pathway

As we establish a new habit of thinking that there is no such thing as failure, we then start to view supposedly failure as a learning opportunity and as feedback from our environment. This creates a wonderful space for learning, curiosity and growth, and allows us to continue moving forward towards our goals.

So next time you experience a setback here are some useful questions to ask yourself to realign your thinking:

• What did I learn from this situation?
• What will I do differently next time?
• What can I do to improve this situation?
• What are the gaps in my skills, knowledge or thinking?
• What are the positives that I can take from this situation?

“Remember that failure is an event, not a person.” Zig Ziglar