Failures Lure Success

When I was young I often heard my parents and teachers telling us that failure is the key to succeed.

Also on failing we would hear try, try until you succeed. Since childhood we have been taught that if we want to climb the ladder of success failure is a must. Though since childhood things have changed a bit and failure is no longer looked at as indignity but failure stories are the main focus now. People are not afraid to fail as failure only lures success. The fact is that everyone experiences failure at some point in their lives but what really matters is that how we overcome and learn from these failures.

We all know that Bill Gates is one of the richest people in the world, but he didn’t get things easily. 
Gates gave his entrepreneurial stint a try by entering into Traf-O-Data, which dealt with analysing and processing of data from tapes. He and his partner Paul Allen tried to sell the idea but it did not work and was a complete disaster. Though he failed, this didn’t stop Gates to explore new avenues and years later he also made the first Microsoft product. From then success came knocking at his door.

Superstar, Amitabh Bachchan was quite popular in the 1970’s and the 80’s.
His presence was so dominant in the movies that François Truffaut, French director addressed him as a one-man industry. But in the 90’s the superstar faced failure and his films failed at the box office. Along with this, his production house also collapsed leading him to financial crisis. He brushed his failures aside and made a comeback and as of now is still the most bankable, respected and successful actors in the world. He is 72 years and has proved that age should not be a barrier to overcome failures, age is just a number.

Before Walt Disney became a legend he was struggling hard to make ends meet and while working for a newspaper he was fired by the editor as he lacked imagination and innovative ideas. He started a small company and created Oswald the Rabbit which became a huge success but at that time he was only getting 20% cut on his films. He got another setback when his producer stole his character Oswald along with the animation crew. Instead of brooding and crying over what happened he went on to create his most successful cartoon character – Mickey Mouse. When he launched Mickey he was told that it would not work as women might get scared of a mouse on the screen. But the women loved the character and so did the world. Disney did not let the failures come into his path; he put them behind stood strong and moved on towards success. Am sure there might be no person who has not heard of Walt Disney or Disney.

Robert Kaplan, a Professor at Harvard Business School believes that the failure stories are better than success stories as these help to understand the peculiarity and skills of a person. It sharpens the leadership qualities while talking about experiences where one failed, got rejected or abandoned.

There are good days and there are bad days and then there are normal days, so when you have a normal day do sit down and think about your failure and the knowledge you got from it:

• Set some time: It is okay that you have failed and feel low about it, but it would be quite unfair that you forget all about it in sometime. Keep aside some time to be upset, frustrated and angry so that you can clear it out from your system. Give maximum 24 hours to let it out and wake up and start the day with a clean slate.
• Talk to people: Talking to someone can make you feel better and shed off the load. When you talk to people they make you feel better and if they don’t at least you know that it’s off your mind.
• Don’t let it be your identity: Failure does not define you it is something that happens. Just because you have not achieved a successful way of doing a thing does not mean that you have become a failure. We are often defined by our actions, so the action taken to brush off failure to reach success is what will define us.

Now that we know that failure is good as it helps in growing opportunity necessary for growth; let’s change the definition of failure today so that we don’t feel bad when we do not achieve our goals in the first go and try again only to succeed. Winston Churchill has very aptly stated that “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm”.

By Shubhra Rastogi

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