Can You Let Yourself Fail A little?
Contrary to popular opinion, it's okay to fail, in fact, do it more often than your peers and you will grow faster than them
Failure is not the biggest fear I have experienced, in fact, I wish I failed more often.
A wise man once said that we needed to fail and fail fast. The faster you fail the faster you learn a new way to get through it. No one fails and remains the same afterward. On the other hand, if you keep succeeding you might get too comfortable and not allow room for improvement.
As the saying goes, we learn more from failure than we ever learn from success. If this is true, why do people get scared to fail? Why do we get gloomy when we see the result after a test and a bold, bloody red ink with a huge F appears on our script? why do we get depressed and slip into an unpleasant mood when we get rejected, especially after we have given all we got to make it work?
I can relate to these feelings, I have been down this lane quite often but I didn’t like it. Also, I choose to play life safe. The less I failed the less I had to feel downcast. The less I tried the lesser my chances of failing and feeling depressed. See I love myself too much to give chances for failure and discomfort.
What I fail, or probably choose to ignore is that not trying doesn't make one better nor does it stop us from failing at that task. On the contrary, you fail every time you don’t take an action. You might not get a negative result when you don’t try, you don’t get any result either. Isn’t it better to try and hope to get a positive response than not trying and get nothing?
The reason people don’t act is simply that society has painted failure as terrible and should be avoided. In schools, you get whipped for failing and that instills the fear of failing in us. as we grew that fear keeps lingering.
Forgetting that corrections were introduced to encourage us to learn new ways to do things. Imagining teaching a new subject to a class of a hundred and nobody fails, in my thinking, you haven’t done a good job. If what you're teaching is new to them, then you can rest assured they would fail. When that happens, beating or criticizing them isn’t the way to deal with it.
Recognize they acted and then correct their errors. People learn more when they are corrected than when they are praised. If you are sincere with your growth, you would attest to this fact. Can you remember the last time you were corrected? Did you forget what that correction was? I doubt you do.
If you are a person of faith you probably have come across the verse that says whom the father loves he corrects. That shows that a true father anticipates the failure of his child and it takes love to correct them when they fail. Because in the place of correction a child learns a valuable lesson that they won’t have to learn if they did fail.
Have you been seeing failure as a bad thing?
Well, it is not just you. We have an entire human race that frowns at failure and settles for mediocrity in the name of not failing. Not failing doesn’t mean you’re succeeding hope yiu’re aware of this? Failure is a potent weapon for success and growth.
However, what is wrong is settling for failure. As much as this article is projected at getting the best from failure, you don’t want to get comfortable with failure. On the contrary, failure should be your propeller for success. You are to learn from failure and push forward and not to become complacent that failure becomes a way of life for you.
Here is how to turn failure into a potent weapon for growth.
Recognize you have failed. There is no point convincing yourself you didn’t fail. Denying the obvious doesn’t push it away, it just hinders you from getting over it.
Identify what led to failure. You don’t just fail, things culminate into it. In getting the best from failed experience you need to identify what led to it. What didn’t you do or what did you do that resulted in the failure.
Identify what could have been done better. Every correction comes with an action for getting it right. Identify the right steps you should have taken and try them again to get a positive result.
Apply the new experience. The proof that you have learned something new is in the application of that new knowledge in your life. If you did steps 1-3 correctly, this should be easy and produce results.
START AGAIN. The greatest comeback is to do it again. This time you do it with experience and not from scratch. Remember that maths test, after you failed the first time and correction was made, you are pumped to take the test again. This time you do it with greater confidence because you have been there before and it is easy to ride on past experience than on a new one.
You might go through these steps and still fail. Well, that’s a good thing too. It means you have to take the steps again. Don’t settle for failure but don’t become complacent because you don’t want to fail. In fact, you should start failing now.
Again I ask, can you let yourself fail a little? Get used to failing and learn from failure. Remember, failure is a sign that you are doing something new. However, when failure persists, I strongly recommend you see a doctor(expert in that field) or have a rethink of the entire plan. If it can be modified do that or move on to other activities.
The ultimate goal is for you to see failure as a stepping stone and not a limitation.
Give it another try but this time with adequate information.
To your continuous growth.
Best regards
James Iroro
The Inkgenius Consult