I failed
My life is over. I have hit the bottom. I don't know what to do.
People try to say, “all great successes start with failure”.
This is not true. Nor is true that Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times before he invented a lightbulb.
Don’t let people indoctrinate you into the faddish cult of failure.
It’s depressing and makes you feel like you can’t get out of bed and nothing is worth it and nothing will ever work again.
Also, failure can kill you. When Phillipe Petit walked on a tight wire between the two buildings of the World Trade Center, he couldn’t afford to fail.
This past year, I have been very carefree academic results. France as an exchange experience has been a very defining experience when it came to my aloofness to academics. I do not seem to give much into performing top notch for exams. This had to do a lot with the reinforcement that education system I am in has to give for active learning. They do not care about your grades as much as they care about you having some real life application at the end of the week.
Having been for the past 2 decades of life trained to merely achieved the highest scores in exams, you can imagine the extent of resocialization that took place.
But indeed, believe it or not.
I failed.
Yet.
My life is not over. I have not hit the bottom. I do know what to do.
Actually, I am reveling in the sweet joy of failure. Let me explain.
I am attending a Strategic Marketing Course this week. And we talked a lot about Elon Musk and his 'okayness' with failing. "You are bound to fail, just make sure to fail quickly." This was the main take away.
But he is a big guy. He is 'allowed' to say such things.
But if you understand it well, he actually allows himself to say such things. That's mostly because he has a positive and a good self-esteem.
Why is it 'okay' to fail?
Thanks to an invigorating conversation with a friend in Dubai, I came to understand how much academics do not matter in the face of talent and skills that you have to offer as your proficiency.
1. Failure is inevitable.
At least once in your life, you are going to fail at something. Your talent, intelligence, hard work, and/or passion will not be able to save you. Failure is inevitable. Everybody has failed, although some refuse to admit it. Don’t let them fool you. I set a poll on my Instagram asking, "Have you ever failed an exam?" I had a whooping 93% replied with a "yes". When I looked at the results, the most unexpected of my peers accept having failed at one point or the other in their lives. They are always so confident, always so happy and always as hard-working.
2. You take more chances when you’re unafraid to fail.
People who are afraid to fail are pretty boring. They play it safe. They never take chances. On the other hand, those who are unafraid to fail take insane risk. They’ll go out for that singing competition, even though they can’t sing. They’ll apply for that big-time job, even if they don’t meet all the requirements. These types of risk make life more enjoyable. And you never know, those risks you take when you’re unafraid to fail just might pay off. The one-semester younger me would never have participated in that L'Oreal Competition. But I did. And we won it.
3. It Causes You to Evolve.
Being an entrepreneur is all about growing and learning through diverse experiences. When you make mistakes, you’ll learn what not to do next time.
Remember, “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.” — J.K. Rowling
How to be okay with failing?
When people hold a negative perception of themselves, it is not surprising that they feel quickly defeated when faced with challenges. Each obstacle, mistake, or failure can seem like proof of what they already know – that they won’t succeed and that they are not okay.
So, the first thing about accepting failure and being okay with it, focus on valuing who you are, not what you do. When people look to their accomplishments to validate that they are worthy, their sense of feeling good about themselves rides on those accomplishments. So, if you perform well, you will feel good about yourself. If you perform poorly, you will feel less worthy. But you are more than your accomplishments. Just as every infant is born into this world as a worthy human being, you are worthy just for being you.
