Failure is Good

My Blog entry today might raised some eyebrows or might arise some disagreements to some of my dear readers (as if I have hahaha). Because I have to convince you that failure is good. 

We always hear from people that “failure is NOT an option” and our minds are programmed to avoid failures. 

Why are we scared to fail?

1. Danger ahead - our brain is designed to react to “danger” how? By feeling scared. Most of us are scared to go to dark places because we might get robbed or we might see ghost, most of us are scared of dogs because we don’t want to get bitten. I myself is scared of travelling by boat, because what if the boat will sink? I am not a good swimmer. We feel the danger if our lives are at stake, ofcourse who wants to get hurt? Or die? Sometimes the fear or failure can equate to our feeling of “danger”. We feel don’t feel right when failure is coming hence, we do necessary things to avoid it. Most of the time we stay on the “safe side” just to avoid it. 
2. We are trained not to fail - I can still remember when I was I high school, I am so scared to get an F mark, because it will show on your Class card and it may be a factor for me not get admitted in my dream school and my whole life is ruined. Fast forward, when I was in college, I got a failed mark, because of a project we failed to submit. I had groupmates on that project and all of us failed and we had to retake that course, I cried for days because of that because I am scared that i will not be able to graduate because of that and it will ruin my life, but guess what 12 years after, Did it affect my life at all? nah!.... How about my groupmates? JD is very successful with his online job, he was able to buy his own house and car and he’ll get married soon, Raymund he is now a sales manager in Toyota, Bernard who’s a happily married man and travelling around the world with his job as a sea farer, and me, i graduated MBA. At School we are trained not to fail and we should avoid it by studying and being a good student, which is good, but School never teaches us the value of failure and the things we can learn from it. 
3. Failure means you cannot move forward - Here’s another sad story of failure. I am about get my MBA degree, I was able to finish all the subjects but before we get the diploma, we need to take the comprehensive exam and defend our strategic Management plan. My mind is set the graduation and Getting the MBA title and I was confident to Ace it things didn’t happened the way I expected it, and yes I failed! I got so emotional about it and I cried for days. I was asked to retake the exam but i didn’t because of my ego. I thought its the end and I don’t want to finish my MBA anymore thinking its not worth it. And its the end of it. After a couple of years, I had this weird energy that pulls me to visit the School so I did, our Dean convinced me to take the exam again. This time I aced it and the grade I got is higher that I expected and I can still remember when our Dean congratulated me, its like the world stops and I ran to the toilet to cry. Failure brings a lot of stress and sadness in our lives. Sometimes these failures leads us to give up and not to try again. 
4. Failure is uncomfortable - because of the emotional tortures we get from failures. The hundreds of thoughts that runs in our minds causes us emotional rollercoaster, which gives us discomfort. As humans, we want to have a comfortable life, we even work hard to have one. We feel uncomfortable when we fail because we have to fix the problem and fixing it may take a lot of time and effort. We may also feel scared because we may fail again and we will feel the same disappointments over again. Hence, we just settle to what is easy — quit! 
5. What would other people say - Many of us are addicted in getting approval from others. From the clothes we wear to some important decisions we will make. Because we care of what other people would say to us, we wanted to show them how accomplish we are or how good we are and we don’t want to look stupid. We don’t want to fail because people might think we messed up, or they may think we are lazy or stupid, we don’t want others to distrust us because we failed something. 

Why do we need to fail? 

Just to be clear, I am not saying that we all need to fail, if you have never experienced failure ever then good for you. 

The best lessons we can get came from the most painful events in our lives. Many successful people (Oprah Winfrey, Col. Sanders, Arnold Schwarzenegger) all had failures, but they used those failures as their drive not to stop to become successful. 

Lets look failures in a different perspective: 

1. We learn - At some point in our lives we fail, but the most important thing about failure is learning from it. 
2. We discover our strengths and weaknesses - Failures brings out the best in us, we become resilient, we become smart in every step we take and we even improve some of our skils. We also discover our weaknesses, the things we need to improve on.
3. We move forward - When we encounter failure we identify different alternative solutions and we move forward. We discover things that are not working (hence we leave them behind) and we take away things that are important. 
4. It inspires us - failure inspires us to do good. It inspires us to be the best person we can be. Lets take Col. Sanders as an example, his chicken recipe got rejected several times before KFC was built. 
5. We learn from our pain - sometimes, we get the best life lessons came from the most bitter and hurtful part of our lives. Before Manny Pacquiao became the world champion, imagine how many times he got bitten. Also, imagine how much emotional pain JK Rowling had to endure, having almost zero on her pocket while supporting her little child before she Harry Potter was released. 

We should change our perspective about failures. No doubt that failures are painful, uncomfortable and often times leads us to deep sadness. But it is part of our lives that we need to face. Failures comes not to make us feel incompetent or feel bad about ourselves. But failures are there for us to learn and to become a better person. 

Whenever you experienced failures be thankful never give up, try and try again until you succeed.