Inspiring Life Lessons You Can Learn From Failure

“Every successful person has failed, numerous times. Most of them have failed a lot more often than we have. That’s why they’re successful now.” – Steve Jobs

As you must have discovered by now, life is full of struggles and challenges and there’s no way to get around that. However, it is not always the challenges that breed long periods of frustration, but rather our failed attempts at overcoming them. Failure is painful. It can push you to be overwhelmed with self-doubt and feelings of helplessness and loss. But on the other hand, if you change your perception of failure, you will soon realize that it is a necessary evil, and it always comes with important lessons learned in life.

Life can be likened to a video game where the goal is to overcome a set of challenges and move to the next level. This analogy extends to school where you move to the next class only after passing the prerequisite; at work when you receive a promotion only after overcoming the challenges that came with your previous position; and even in romantic relationships where your partner opens up to you only when your trust has been gained. But, in order for you to level up, in a more efficient manner, it is important for you to redefine what failure means to you.

What Failure Really is and What you Can Learn from It

What’s your perception of failure? Do you see it as your inability to achieve a particular goal and the self-inflicted limitation that ensues which ultimately pushes you to give up? Or do you perceive it as life lessons to learn; just an attempt that did not work and an opportunity to grow? Adopting the latter definition will make all the difference in the world. It will make you more self-aware and more open to these inspiring life lessons:

1. Other approaches could work better

So, you have been working on a project that failed miserably. What’s next? Again, that really depends on how you define failure. Once you see it as an attempt that did not work, you become aware that other approaches could work better and that gives you the courage to try again. This quote by one of the best inventors in history exemplifies this logic – “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison.

1. There is room for improvement

Once you see failure as an opportunity to grow, you start identifying the areas where you are less efficient and realize that there is room for improvement. And even if you are the best in your field of expertise, seeing failure this way breeds innovation – it encourages you to sail through unexplored waters and uncover new paths.

1. You learn to be humbler and more compassionate

What would your ego look like if you had never suffered a major setback? You already know that too much ego can ruin your life; good thing failure is there to “shatter your house of cards” and teach you humility and compassion. And that same humility aids in helping you see why your previous attempt was unsuccessful, and pushes you to seek new understandings that will eventually lead to success.

1. You learn to become more persistent

At some point in time, you will realize that everyone fails, especially successful people. That’s not a pleasant truth to discover, but it is part of life. You are not going to succeed at everything you try, regardless of how prepared you are. This is not meant to be discouraging, conversely, it ultimately teaches you to become more persistent. After falling flat a few times, you learn to pick yourself up and keep moving forward. This persistence will propel you the furthest in both your work and personal life,

All failures come with an opportunity; the opportunity to learn important life lessons. And if you choose to look keenly at your successes, you will likely notice that some of them came after tweaking the approaches you used in your previous failures.