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What is keeping most people from going after their dreams? Correct, the fear of failure.
Our modern society has become such a safe environment that we rarely need to risk anything anymore. If you are reading this, I guess you have a beautiful and secure home, a more or less stable stream of income, enough food in the fridge, warm clothes to shield you against the cold weather and legal rights you feel rather content with.
This safe life has caused many people to fear failure. They are simply not used to it anymore.
However, if you don’t fail, you don’t grow. If you rarely fail in life, you might as well ask yourself if you’ve lived at all. And you don’t want to regret not having lived your life to the fullest! You can read more on that in 15 Ways To Live A Life You Won’t Regret.
I’ve once read that life can be compared to a heartrate monitor. If you are alive and healthy, your heart steadily beats, and the heart rate line goes up and down and up and down. Therefore we all know it’s a bad sign if the line is flat.
Life, in comparison, is the same. If you truly live it to the fullest, you experience high and low moments, successes and failures. To prepare yourself for those low moments check out 9 Hardships You Have To Face In Life.
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
– Winston Churchill
If you love this quote as much as I do, you should definitely check out 21 Quotes To Overcome Failure after reading this article.
Together this article and the other ones I mentioned earlier are going to erase your fear of failure and give you that motivation to go after your goals and dreams.
So let’s dive into them 7 Reasons Why Failure Is Your Stepping Stone To Success.
1. Failure teaches you more than success
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
– Thomas Edison
The first good thing about failure is the things it teaches you. Every time you fail, you become a bit wiser on what does not work.
Of course, you could say that by succeeding you would learn what does work, which ist more critical. But that is not entirely true.
Success only shows you one way that works. Maybe it is a way that won’t work every time or perhaps it’s one of the worst ways to make it work. You will never know until you have failed and gained more experience.
And because failure is so painful, its lessons stick much more to your memory. You definitely won’t forget them that easily.
2. Failure increases your risk tolerance
This one goes along the lines of what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Once you’ve failed, you will see that it is not the end of the world.
You grow more confident in your ability to recover from failure and therefore you become more willing to accept necessary risks.
The key here is to look for asymmetric risk/reward opportunities. Yes, you always have to risk something, but the goal is to have an overproportionate chance of winning.
After having failed, you won’t be afraid to take that kind of opportunities.
3. Failure makes you more grateful
We, humans, get spoiled so quickly, and we don’t even notice it. Just think about it, I am sure there was a time where you didn’t have a mobile phone. Or your cellphone had barely any storage and short battery life.
But here you are, complaining about 64GB being too little storage and 3G being to slow.
Through failure, you learn to value your small successes more. After a defeat, a little success can make you the happiest person in town.
Failure teaches you to be grateful for the things that you do have. And as I always say, gratitude is key to happiness.
4. You grow through failure
Failure demands resourcefulness and mental strength. You have to do things you usually wouldn’t need to do.
You have to learn how to deal with frustration, disappointment, anxiety, and overwhelm and fight your way back to the top.
Is it easy? No. But it makes you much stronger than any amount of success ever could.
And that strength, that personal growth will help you later along your journey to that extraordinary life of your dreams.
5. Failure opens new doors
Some call it God or the Universe others merely luck, but we all know the situation where you’ve been disappointed by something not working out only to find yourself in a much better situation which you otherwise would have missed.
Maybe you’ve missed your flight and end up having to spend hours at the airport, but there you meet somebody that will change your life forever.
Maybe you didn’t get that job, only to get into a much better position you didn’t even know was available.
Failure tends to open new doors for us, that we otherwise would have never known about.
6. Failure is much better than regret
This one is huge, which is why I’ve also talked about it in 15 Ways To Live A Life You Won’t Regret.
If you want to live an extraordinary life and indeed be happy, you should live with as little regrets as possible.
Failure is, as painful as it might be in the moment, a million times better than to wonder “what if I had takes that leap of faith.”
So embrace failure on your way to success, because later on, it will give you that peace of mind that you’ve at least tried.
7. Every successful person has failed
Lastly, let’s mention that every successful person we are looking up to has failed to some extent in their life.
Some have even failed spectecularly, like J.K. Rowling, Donald Trump or Robert Kiyjosaki.
That should be testament enough that failure is a necessary part of success. So in a way you should celebrate each failure you experience. Because it not only means that you are getting closer to your goals but also that once you reach them, you will be able to look back and tell everybody about the failures you’ve overcome.
I hope this motivates you to keep fighting whenever failure crosses your path.
And again, should you need some more motivation,
I encourage you to continue working towards that life of your dreams!
Until next time,
Sophie.
