If you’re a goal-oriented person like myself you'll know there are few things more infuriating than failure.
Failure is a testimony to your shortcomings, a sickening confirmation that you are simply not good enough.
It doesn’t matter how you’ve failed or in which aspect of your life you failed, the simple fact remains there is something that you tried to do but you weren’t good enough at.
And while there’s nothing as infuriating than failure, I used to believe there was something that ran it a close second.
Namely the person who said to you: “Remember, success isn’t a destination, it’s a journey.”
I’m getting my arse handed to me in the most humiliating of fashions and you’re telling me to enjoy the moment? Get tae f*ck!
But then last week I finally figured it out.
Failure is definitely bad - on this my opinion hasn’t changed - but the benefits failure offers are substantial.
While trying extremely hard not to sound like a healing-crystal exponent, I now firmly believe it's is only in the aftermath of failure that you are truly forced to confront your weaknesses and evaluate, adjust and ultimately improve yourself.
You have to look at yourself and figure out what it is about you, your beliefs and practices that led to the failure. You have to figure out what will have to be done differently to change failure into success.
You might have failed because you didn’t take the task at hand seriously enough or because you were too impatient and rushed through vital preparation stages.
The great thing is that the improvement potentials are endless. Even if you wrongly identify what was wrong you will improve something else before realising you have to improve your problem identifying skills.
In contrast if you succeed you’ll never have to face these issues. You’ll just continue along, oblivious to all the amazing things you could be learning about yourself.
It is failure and our response to it that truly shapes our character, giving us the chance to prove our dedication, our determination and our ability to grow.
In a lot of ways failure is like eating your vegetables. It might not feel good at the time and doesn’t taste good, but ultimately it’s beneficial and you’ll be a better person for the experience.