Failing is a blessing, a stepping stone that leads to success. Here’s why.
Almost everyone knows that Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. But most don't know that Walt Disney was once fired from a newspaper for a lack of ideas and his first cartoon production company went bankrupt.
With all of Dustin Hoffman’s success, it’s hard to believe he worked as a janitor and an attendant in a mental ward because he failed in his first attempt as an actor in New York. Can you imagine Bob Dylan getting booed off the stage at his high school talent show?
It’s also hard to fathom Steven Spielberg not getting accepted to UCLA film school because of average grades. And it’s easy to forget that Steve Jobs was fired from Apple at 30…
The fact is, everyone fails in life, but it is a gift if you don’t give up and are willing to learn, improve and grow because of it. Failure often serves as a defining moment, a crossroad on the journey of your life. It gives you a test designed to measure your courage, perseverance, commitment and dedication. Are you a pretender who gives up after a little adversity or a contender who keeps getting up after getting knocked down?
Failure provides you with a great opportunity to decide how much you really want something. Will you give up? Or will you dig deeper, commit more, work harder, learn and get better? … On the other hand, sometimes failure causes you to take a different path that is better for you in the long run. … Sometimes we have to lose a goal to find our destiny. Sometimes failure helps us see that we want something else.
Whatever path failure guides you toward, it is always meant to give you a big serving of humble pie that builds your character, gives you perspective, grows your faith, and makes you appreciate your success later on. If you didn’t fail, you wouldn’t become the kind of person who ultimately succeeds.
So the next time you fail, don’t let it keep you from the life you were born to live and the future you were meant to create. See failure as a test, a teacher, a detour to a better outcome and an event that builds a better you.
Failure is not meant to be final and fatal. It is not meant to define you. It is meant to refine you to be all that you are meant to be.
When you see failure as a blessing instead of a curse, you will turn the gift of failure into a stepping stone that leads to the gift of success.