5 Amazing Lessons Failure Can Teach You

As much as we love to succeed (preferably all the time) at some point we all experience failure. Sometimes mildly and at others pretty spectacularly. For example – missing a few shots during basketball practice vs. missing the winning shot for the state championship.

I genuinely believe that our true character comes out during failure. It’s easy to be a good person when everything is going our way. But when events seems to be working against us how do we react? Do we allow failure to define and defeat us? Or do we keep focused on the positive, stay connected to other people and continue moving forward?

Don’t get me wrong – failure isn’t fun. But it also isn’t the crack of doom. And if we let it, it can teach us a lot of valuable lessons we might not ever learn otherwise. Here are some of them.

1 - It creates opportunity. One closed door can lead to other, better, more open ones that you might not have pursued otherwise.

2 - It sparks creativity. Necessity is the mother of invention.

If plan A doesn’t work we are often forced to go back to the drawing board and create plan B – which might be better than A was anyway.

3 - It’s a great teacher. Failure shows up your strong and weak points and motivates you to improve them. For many people, failure is the driving force behind success.

Michael Jordan, one of the greatest basketball players in history, didn’t make his high school basketball team. When asked about his early failures, Jordan said:“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”

4 - It teaches perseverance. We live in an “instant” society. We want everything now and yesterday would be better. But after a few failures we realize that in order to get what we want we have to keep going – over and over – because things aren’t just going to drop into our laps.

5 - It fosters resilience. Being able to pick yourself up after a fall, dust yourself off and try again, forces you to become more flexible. Rather than try to do something just one way, you start looking at other approaches to achieve your goals.

So if you’ve experienced a lot of failure lately, welcome to the human race! Remember, it’s not the end of the world. Learn from it, fix what you can, forgive yourself, and move on!