Failure is a Requirement of Success
They go hand in hand and can’t be separated.
Can you imagine what would have happened if you’d quit trying because you kept falling while learning how to walk, or ride a bicycle?
It took me three attempts before I was able to reach the top of the tallest peak in Texas at 8749 feet above the sea level.
I almost gave up less than two weeks into my cross-country walk from Chicago to L.A. It’s a good thing I didn’t. It took me six months, but I finished the more than 2,500 miles walk. I had plenty of ups and downs along the way.
Why do people expect to reach success without ever failing? Failure is a part of the process of becoming successful. Can you think of any of your accomplishments where you did not face obstacles, hardship, or setbacks?
Expect to be ridiculed if you have grand ideas.
Dr. Robert H Goddard was the first one to propel a liquid-fuel rocket. His first attempt to reach the moon only made it to 41 feet. Nobody had launched one before, but people made fun of him.
Today, NASA’s Space Flight Center is named after him.
“Failures I consider valuable negative information, information essential to each step getting closer to the moon.” Dr. Robert H Goddard
Nobody had to tell us that when we were little. We instinctively knew that and used it to learn everything from walking, talking, and riding bicycles. Our parents helped and encouraged us along the way. We had stumbles and falls, resulting in bumps and bruises before we mastered the skills. Today they are second nature; we can’t even imagine not being able to do it.
But when we get older and want to pursue our dreams, people are not so supportive of our goals. They’d say that they want to protect us from failures and disappointments. But disappointments are part of the process. We learn from our failures and reach where we want to go.
My cousin, with whom I stayed at the beginning of my Route 66 walk, kept trying to talk me out of it. He wanted me to abandon it or do it differently, like maybe ride a bike instead of walking. It turned out that he was projecting his fears on me. People will do that; don’t let them.
We will fall along the way in pursuit of our dreams; it is to be expected, and people will laugh when we do, as they have at every dreamer. But it is the dreamers who end up changing the world because they believed in their dreams and took the falls as essential negative information.
“Do not judge me by my successes; judge me by how many times I fell down and got up again.” ~ Nelson Mandela
Are you ready to fall again and again? As long as you keep getting up and keep going, you will succeed. As my friend and mentor, Darren Lacroix, Toastmasters World Champion of Public Speaking 2001, said in his winning speech, “It’s the step after the ouch that matters.”
He said that when you get up after your fall, you’ll realize that you still made progress despite your fall. He encouraged his audience to “go ahead and fall. Fall Forward.”
Are you willing to fall forward?
Rasheed Hooda is a regular contributor to #ILLUMINATION, a writers’ community on Medium, where writers support each other to grow and prosper.
He is a self-proclaimed weirdo who lives a Freedom Lifestyle and writes about related topics — Travel (a top writer), Personal Growth, Freedom, and entrepreneurship. (Join the Tribe)
“You can let others tell you what it means to be successful, or you can decide it for yourself.”
