"You are a failure."
The sentence above is very harsh, isn't it? Maybe you’ve heard it before or not. However, we can all imagine how it would feel to hear that from someone we love or look up to. It would hurt, and we would not feel good about ourselves.
From early on we learn that failing is bad and succeeding is good. Through thousands of examples we see that those who fail live horrible lives and those who succeed live the most awesome lives. The first, we pity. The second, we admire.
When we are kids, parents and professors teach us about the dangers of failure. They say that if we fail, we won´t pass our grade and we´ll stay behind everyone else. They say that if we keep failing, we´ll become a bump and no one will want to be anywhere near us. Indeed, failing seems very frightening.
I´m not here to say that failing is good and succeeding is bad. On the contrary, failing sucks & it feels bad and succeeding is good & it feels awesome. No one can say otherwise. However, what if failing is a necessary evil?
For most people that didn´t truly succeed, the case is not that they failed every time that they tried to break out of their shell, the so called comfort zone. They didn´t truly succeed because they stayed in their shell. They were too afraid of trying, too afraid of failing.
Now think of someone that failed, someone that is going through real hardship. This person doesn´t have much more to lose. Because of that, fear has been stripped away; they have nothing to lose by trying.
When we are kids, parents and professors teach us about the dangers of failure. They say that if we fail, we won´t pass our grade and we´ll stay behind everyone else. They say that if we keep failing, we´ll become a bump and no one will want to be anywhere near us. Indeed, failing seems very frightening.
I´m not here to say that failing is good and succeeding is bad. On the contrary, failing sucks & it feels bad and succeeding is good & it feels awesome. No one can say otherwise. However, what if failing is a necessary evil?
For most people that didn´t truly succeed, the case is not that they failed every time that they tried to break out of their shell, the so called comfort zone. They didn´t truly succeed because they stayed in their shell. They were too afraid of trying, too afraid of failing.
Now think of someone that failed, someone that is going through real hardship. This person doesn´t have much more to lose. Because of that, fear has been stripped away; they have nothing to lose by trying.
Think of some of the greats, those that we truly admire: Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Oprah, Steven Spielberg, J. K. Rowling, Einstein, Van Gogh, Darwin, Henry Ford, Stephen King, The Beatles, Michael Jordan and Elvis Presley. These are just a few examples of people that failed before they succeeded. Some of them failed bigger than others, but what´s important here is that they were brave enough to try something and didn´t stop when the door was shut on their face. They kept trying, they kept pushing, they kept their head up and they believed in themselves.
As Michelangelo once said: “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”
Living in fear is far worse than failing. While failing is frightening and sucks, sometimes is what we need in order to take a chance and reach our full potential.
Thanks for reading!
Best,
Pedro
Best,
Pedro
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