Summary

The text emphasizes the importance of failing first as a means of learning, growing, and ultimately achieving success.

Abstract

The article titled "Why You Need to Fail First" argues that failure is a necessary step towards success. It posits that failure provides an opportunity to learn, grow, and progress. The author acknowledges that the idea of aiming to fail first may seem counter-intuitive, as society often emphasizes the importance of success. However, the author contends that failure is the only way to truly learn and move forward. The author also challenges the conventional view of failure as a negative outcome, suggesting that it is merely a perspective that needs to be changed. The article further illustrates that every successful person has experienced failure multiple times on their journey to success.

Opinions

Failure is a necessary step towards learning, growing, and achieving success.
Society's emphasis on success often overlooks the importance of failure in the learning process.
Failure should not be viewed as a negative outcome, but rather as an opportunity for growth and learning.
Every successful person has experienced failure multiple times.
The conventional view of failure as a negative outcome needs to be challenged.
Failure allows individuals to become stronger and more resilient.
The response to failure can either be to give up completely or to learn from the experience and grow.

Why You Need to Fail First

Wave crashing on the shore. Credit Pixabay

Fail First.

Those two words probably seem counter-intuitive, especially when we all want to succeed at all our endeavors in life.

But we really should be aiming to fail first.

Failing is the only way to learn, grow, progress, move forward, and CHANGE.

Failure shows you how to be strong when you don’t feel like it. Nobody likes failure, honestly.

Except I don’t really believe that failure exists in the form that most people think when they hear that word.

Failure.

Screw up.

Quitting.

Losing.

Nobody likes a failure, a screw up, a quitter, or a loser.

Except that every single successful person out there has failed multiple times on his or her way to success.

Their middles — compared with your beginnings — they look pretty rosy, right? All successful online businesses raking in the dough, telling you how to do it yourself.

They leave out the long, frustrating nights spent slaving over the keyboard trying to learn WordPress and spending an hour in panic when they accidentally break their website.

Not mentioned are the fleeting moments at work when they had a really good idea but nowhere to write it down, and the frustration when they can’t remember it later.

Failure, in my opinion, is only an opportunity to learn.

If you fail at something, there are two options of response.

One, you give up completely, and feel terrible about it for the rest of your life.

Or two, you look at it with the growth mindset and determine what you can learn from the failure.

Did you break your website fiddling with things at 3 AM? Then you’ve learned to not fiddle at 3 AM, and also you learned how to fix the thing you broke — at 4 AM.

Failure results in growth and learning, but only if you let it.

Let it.