5 Reasons Why Failure Is A Good Thing

Failure is food for the brain and soul.

If I had my way I would demolish failure. It’s scary and I don’t want it anywhere near me. That being said, it’s essential and inescapable to life.

Few things are scarier than failure in my opinion. It has taken countless therapy sessions to accept that if I fail I won’t die. No, in reality, failure provides us the hearty sustenance to grow. It’s painful for a reason. Life is balanced, where there is suffering there is joy on the flipside. We merely need to continue to slug through the s*** until we see a sliver of light. The longer the slugging the greater the growth. How’s that for glass half full?

1. We need failure to understand what success is.

Failure is the opposite of success and it is sometimes feared stronger than accomplishment is desired. When success is at the forefront, we have tunnel vision. We become blind to the setbacks and turns we must take to arrive at the end goal. However, with failure, those setbacks become the main focus. And with this main focus, we begin to understand that being successful is not in the accomplishment but it is in the reaction to every failure. Without failure we would never learn that success isn’t the absence of failure, it’s when you are ready to face the next failure head-on. I wish it were more simple. But at the end of the day, whoever said it was right; it’s about the journey, not the destination. Even when the journey is crap.

2. Failing is necessary because it shows us the worst in us.

Humans are multifaceted creatures.  We are so misunderstood! We can adapt and morph and transform into the person we need to be to fit countless situations. This is a strength of humans but can also leave us with the question of who we are deep down. *Cue existential crisis. The beauty of failure is that it strips us of all masks. We are left with raw emotion. It brings struggles into our lives that force us to contemplate how we react and how we want to grow. When struggle wins and leaves us with failure we no longer can pretend to be who we want to be, we simply are. It is from here that we painfully grow into our true selves. Embrace the pain friends.

3. Failure provides gratitude.

People say all the time not to take things for granted. But people never say HOW to not take things for granted. As if it were a simple choice. If we continuously achieve or get things without strife how would we know what it was like to not have those accomplishments in our bag? There are a million reasons why we might be chosen for that new job or get that promotion but we don’t want to admit that many of those reasons come down to luck or happening to know the right person in HR. Not to say you aren’t a special unicorn, I’m sure you are. But when we fail to obtain something we want we begin to understand its true value. We begin to appreciate how hard we are willing to work. Remember when you were a child and you would ask mom 10 times for a cookie and she would say no. Then you would ask dad 11 times for a cookie, and he eventually would say yes. The cookie ALWAYS tastes better when you work for it.

4. It builds character.

Failure sucks, am I right? Yea nobody likes it. But it can teach you some pretty gnarly things about yourself. Let’s think about the classic story of falling off your bike. Every time we fall off we have a choice. We can get back on or forever live our lives as weird kids who don’t know how to ride a bike. Weird is great, but not this type of weird. Don’t be that weird kid. The beauty of failure is that it will continue to present you with opportunities time and time and time again to build traits that will make your life easier and more enjoyable in the future. It’s wonderful to think about it. There are so many opportunities to fail, which means so many opportunities to become more awesome! Think of the long game. You can’t avoid failure forever. So you can either fail hard now and live with the wisdom of how to stand up, and put one foot in front of another once again for the rest of your life. Or you can learn when you’ve hit rock bottom and there’s no other choice. Neither is wrong. Once again it’s a choice to learn from failure. But it isn’t a choice to not have it.

5. Failure teaches us about control.

Life isn’t easy. With perspective, I think we can agree everyone has their own set of crap to deal with. No matter how hard we try and how much time we dedicate, there will always be things outside our control. (I’m still trying to figure out how to control everything, it’s not going well). When we are presented with failure, our first instinct is to reflect on what we could’ve done differently. However, that is not always why things don’t go to plan. Hold up. OFTEN this is not the reason things don’t go exactly to plan.  If we want to go through life with our sanity (it’s your choice) we have to give credit where credit is due. We cannot control every aspect of life, but feel free to try. Sometimes we can try our whole lives to achieve something but something in the universe won’t let it be. Not to say not to try because there is growth in the process not in the end game. But the more we accept that certain things are out of our control the more focus we can put into the things that are.

So what did we learn?

Failure is inevitable. Accept it and move on. Until we all turn into cyborgs there will be slip-ups, mistakes, catastrophes, and horrible horrible oopsies along the way. It’s the beauty of being human, gotta love it.

You aren’t alone. You are not the only one who screws up or is struggling. I write this at a time of intense struggle in my life. Every day I have to remind myself that I am not in the Guinness Book of World Records for failing. Shout out to my fam for helping with the reminders!

Failure forces us to grow, it leads us to a greater sense of self, stronger social confidence, and perseverance to take on life’s greatest challenges. Life is hard. We do the best we can, and we will adjust along the way.

Keep adjusting and you’ll do fine. Happy failing!