Failure: 3 Reasons To Embrace It
Failure can be a difficult thing to know how to deal with. In my life, I’ve known plenty of it and haven’t ever found it to be fun. Still, failure has done a lot of things for me. If you are struggling with how to deal with it, take a look at my three positive spins on failure to guide you through it.
Just a couple years back, a man named Patrick O’Hennesey was down on his luck and desperate to make amends with his bank account. He believed he had a foolproof plan—he was going to embark on a string of robberies in order to set his finances straight.
O’hennesy set out to take his first store and walked into a small corner shop in a quaint little town south of Dublin. He was draped in a long black overcoat and looked quite menacing except for his boyish face. Patrick withdrew a gun from his trench coat and demanded all of the money from the cash drawer.
Once the cash was stuffed in a sack, the robber eyed a bottle of Scotch on the shelf behind the shopkeeper. He told the man behind the counter to hand that over as well, but the cashier refused, saying, “You ain’t a day over 17 you wee little bugger!” (18 is the legal drinking age in Ireland). Patrick insisted he was old enough, but the shop owner wouldn’t budge.
With great frustration, the thief took out his drivers license and thrust it at the shopkeeper who inspected it quite thoroughly. “See? I’m 23. Lookey there.”
The shopkeeper agreed that the man was in fact of age and handed the Scotch on over the counter. Our robber then fled with his winnings in hand. But while ole Patrick was merrily running back home, the shopkeeper phoned the authorities with the name and address of the robber as seen on the license.
Police arrested Patrick two hours later as he opened his door in his pajamas.
Patrick O’Hennesey’s plan failed miserably. In my own life, I have known a number of failures. Some have been big and caused great setbacks and others small and nothing more than annoyances. It can be difficult to shrug off failure when we face it. But I would like to give you three quick perspectives on failure to pick yourself up when you get knocked down.
1- Failure Keeps Us Humble
If we were only to have success in our lives we would quickly begin to think too much of ourselves and put too much faith in our own ability. This would eventually present two problems.
One, we might begin to think we were indestructible and choose to take far more risk than we should. Without some periodic failure, we might begin risking it on a catastrophic scale, leaving ourselves in a world of hurt. Experiencing some degree of failure along our journey helps us place a check on our decision making.
Second, without failure, we would likely stop relying on the assistance of others. If we believe we can’t fail why would we need help?
But we are made to need each other. That is part of the balance of life and it helps not only me but those who help me. And I can’t know everything I ever need to know on my own. If we want to keep rising to new heights we need the help of others. And humility makes sure we do.
2- Failure Makes Us Stronger
The second point about failure is that it makes us stronger.
Each time we fail we become more resilient against it in the future. In other words, it has less of a destructive effect on us because we become used to it more. It’s similar to the concept of inoculation.
Bill Haast directed the Miami Serpentarium Laboratories in their efforts of venom extraction from some of the most dangerous snakes known to man. He also operated the Miami Serpentarium where he voluntarily injected himself with venom he extracted. As a tourist attraction, people would pay to see this frightening process.
But what might kill other healthy men his age barely affected him. In fact, he lived to be 100 years old, far more than most people.
How did Bill survive these repeated injections with deadly snake venom? He inoculated himself over many years. By administering small doses of venom his body began to develop an immunity to it.
In the same way, failure can work like this as well.
Rather than be emotionally decimated by a large failure, we can develop an immunity to its effects over the course of many smaller failures. Learn to deal with failure well on a smaller scale and you can survive the bigger, “deadlier” ones.
3- Failure Redirects Us
Finally, failure can redirect us in important ways. What we all hope for our friend Patrick after his failure is that his path is redirected for the better.
Some failure can be a wake-up call that our intended course in life is not the correct one.
It takes a little discernment to know whether our failure was a minor trip-up on the right path or one to clue us in on our errant ways. But I believe that if we are open to properly interpret our failures we can occasionally come to an understanding that the direction we were going was just not right.
Or failure can make us aware that we are not quite ready for the path.
Either way, evaluating the outcome with some basic intuition can work to get us on the right path at the right time and help lead us to our destiny.
Take Away
It’s natural to want to avoid failure or to be ashamed of it when we experience it. But if we spend our lives trying to avoid it or separate ourselves from it we can never completely grow into the fully-realized person we are designed to be.
Failure has its place in our development as people.
Whether minor or major, if you are recovering from a failure right now you might be trying to avoid contact with it. But rather than separate yourself from it, embrace it.
In as little as two or three minutes, write down that failure that you are beating yourself up over and list out three benefits for it. I’m sure that when you set your mind to think of them they will flow out of you easily onto the paper.
Take a moment to reflect on those benefits and work to remember them throughout the day. Rather than mentally react to thoughts of failure as they arise, try to infuse your thinking with the positive results you are experiencing as you go throughout your day.
Our failures help us in ways we often never think about. The key is to “think about.”
But if we avoid failure and treat it as taboo we will miss the opportunities it brings us.
Let failure humble you, strengthen you, and redirect you into becoming a better version of you than you ever could have without it. As you do, you might just learn to welcome it.
Need more encouragement about failure? Download my free 42-page ebook with nine different perspectives from such notable successes as Mike Ditka, J.K. Rowling, Richard Branson & more. Download it here now.
Hello, my name is Aaron Force. I’m a blogger based in Seattle, Washington. I’ve been spiritually-minded for most of my life. Unfortunately, I’ve also lost my way during much of that time. I felt a seed of greatness hidden somewhere deep down inside but was blinded from it. That is until I experienced an honest-to-goodness calling and moment of awakening. I would be lying if I told you I had it all figured out. But I’m here to tell my story and maybe, just maybe, help you become aware of an even more amazing universe than the one your rational mind already knows.
Aaron Force is a blogger from Seattle, Washington. He writes to educate others about the nature of an expanded consciousness to evolve humanity. Aaron unexpectedly experienced his own profound awakening and ego transcendence in 2015 and soon understood that the qualities of his own experience (a greater expansion and evolution in his life) could be applied to mankind collectively.