If You Don’t Learn This, You Will Be Defeated For the Rest of Your Life: Lessons You Can Learn From Failure, Part 1
“We learn more from failure. Not from success!” —Bram Stoker
When I’m around babies I love observing them because it seems like they don’t understand the meaning of “Giving up.” They are so persistent. They never stop trying. Even though they mess up time and time again, they never give up until either you step in or they achieve their goal. One big example is when they are learning how to walk. Even when they fall, they always get back up. Eventually they will walk, and then they will run. Les Brown once said “You don’t stop until you win!” We can learn so much just from that lesson alone.
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Through failure, I learned how to walk, how to run, how to write, how to read, how to tie my shoes, and how to brush my teeth properly (I’m sure you probably did as well). I learned how to talk to women, I learn how to get over the fear of rejection, how to play basketball, how to overcome hunger, how to build a family, how to do my homework properly, how to study for tests, that I should listen to my parents, and I learned how to stay out of trouble. The biggest lesson I think that I learned from failure is how to be successful.
The anxiety caused by the fear of failure is something that many people struggle with. In a survey done a few years ago; 90% of CEO’s “Admit fear of failure keeps them up at night more than any other concern.”
Here are three key character developing principles that you can learn from failure that will help you overcome the anxiety of failure. And I believe that overcoming this is critical to your success in life.
1. Failure Teaches You Perseverance
When I first started being an entrepreneur, I didn’t know what I was doing. All I knew was that I had a desire to build a business. The beginning of it all was tough and after many years it just started to get easier for me. With every goal met a new goal was created. But I learned that if I kept on going and not give up, eventually I would get to the promised land. Brian Tracy once said “By the yard it's hard, but inch by inch, anything's a cinch.” If you continue on and just do little by little everyday, you’ll discover that the mountain that you’re climbing isn’t as difficult to climb as you think it is.
To persevere is to continue in a course of action even in the face of difficulty with little or no prospect of success. No matter what you always have to keep moving forward. Learning to persevere is a great lesson to learn in life. I learned this lesson in my own life as an entrepreneur.
2. Failure Teaches You Patience
With patience comes long suffering. Which means to have or show patience in spite of troubles, especially those caused by other people. It's learning to forbear and being tolerant and uncomplaining. Sometimes failure can be caused by someone else. But if you say you love someone and you're not long suffering towards that person, then you don’t really love them and you’re not only lying to them when you say you love them, you’re really lying to yourself. And lying to yourself is a sad way to live your life. I pity the self-liars more than anyone else. Because people like that will never be able to obtain the knowledge of the truth and the freedom that comes with it.
Being patient means to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset. This is big because most times people give in to angry temper and when you give in to anger you become unbalanced. I’ve experienced this many times in my life being a father and a husband. You will never do everything right 100% of the time. When I mess up I get frustrated and it can cause me to think irrationally. Sometimes I found myself taking it out on my family (which wasn’t the source of my problems). I had to learn to accept hard times in order to get to the good times.
3. Failure Teaches You Humility
In my youth, I loved to play basketball. When I was on the court “trash talking” was inevitable. I sometimes did a lot of trash talking, especially when I was winning. One time I got beat so bad that I couldn’t even look the other team in their eyes. I was so angry but then I realized that it's just a game and I can’t win them all. After that, when I would win I stopped talking trash and I decided to be graceful and humble even in victory and I found out something very important about building relationships with people when you don’t rub your success in their face. I discovered that you will win a great deal of respect from people if you learn to be humble.
Being humble means to have or show a modest or low estimate of one's own importance. Winning all the time can make someone very prideful. And as it says in the Bible “Pride comes before the fall.” When you fail at doing something it gives you a sense of lowliness. Sometimes people look at humility as a weakness but I believe it’s actually a strength. Because people who are humble don’t have big egos or an overbearing personality. They know that they aren’t perfect, but all they want is to be better. People who are humble are usually easier to get along with and they don’t act like they’re better than everyone else. I had to learn this for myself.
Conclusion
Here is the biggest takeaway from this article. Don’t fear failure, embrace it. If you fear to fail then you will never try anything new. And if you don’t try new things you will never obtain a high level of value. The people who have built wealth for themselves have learned to deal with failure. They know that failure helped them become wealthy. Because they figured out what not to do. You can learn from other people's failure as well as your own. The point is to learn from it. We’ll learn more lessons in Part 2 of this series.
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If you like this article, I encourage you to watch my free training video “4 Key Reasons Why Most Entrepreneurs and Business Owners fail at life”. In it I share 4 power keys of leveling up. Also if you like this content, please sign up for our newsletter. Thanks for reading!
Hans Fleurimont,
Founder & CEO of The Galerie Media Inc.
