What do you think when you hear the word ‘failure’? it is terrifying, making people double think about themselves, may be question themselves. The whole question here is not people questioning the failure but that they question themselves above the act that has happened in first place. Isn’t it worth exploring failure and some of the history of failure with how people have reacted about it of course possibly with what was the result. 

You and I have probably tried something new in the past, we might have succeeded or failed. Well, today I am going to focus on failure as it is considered a fuel and motive for most of us to continue or stop doing what we were trying to do. From the experience, I have tried as many things as possible and trust me I am still a long way to go, I mean I am still trying new things in my life and see what happens. To be honest, it is sometimes terrifying to try doing something because you are not really sure of what’s going to be the result, but there is no way you can know the result before you try doing the thing. 

For example, I have tried to ask for a raise for my junior position back in 2020. It took me quite some time to decide and go approach my boss and have that uncomfortable talk. I carried the thought in my mind for as long as more than a month and it almost crushed my head. However, I decided to have the meeting with my boss which definitely resulted into a failure as I couldn’t get what I was looking for. Despite the fact that I didn’t get what I was looking for, this case a pay raise, I felt so relieved from holding that idea, from holding that conversation in my head. From then, that’s when I learned some feedback from my boss. In other words, I failed to get a raise but I managed to get a great, uncensored feedback from my boss which absolutely led to my growth. So, from having the uncomfortable discussions, there is no way you are going to leave the room without having gained something more valuable possibly more valuable than what you were looking for in the first place. Moreover, I reacted about this so good than I expected but of course I had this second thought popping in my mind; something like ‘but Jado, we didn’t get what we were looking for to begin with, what do you do about it’; of course, I had to silence the thought because I had gotten something very important from the conversation. 

Another interesting example is more of a business failure than a failure in personal life. Yes you are right to think about this, it is more tragic when the failure happens in business setting most of the time when you are the leader of the organization or high level executive leading some business activities. The example I have to give is that of Amazon; Jeff Bezos the CEO of the company was leading the launch of a new product ‘Fire Phone’; a disastrous launch, yes, disastrous on July 25 2014. Amazing was the reaction of Jeff Bezos about his catastrophic failure of the product that millions of dollars were invested in utterly failed I would say. He responded so funny that most of the shareholders, investors didn’t expect, didn’t like it of course. He reacted, “if you think that’s a big failure, we’re working on much bigger failures right now. I am not kidding. Some of them are going to make the Fire Phone look like a tiny little blip.” Surprising enough, he didn’t apologize. Sure enough, Amazon is one of the most lucrative businesses that have ever existed in our generational life time. My analysis would be ‘maybe it is very hard to succeed if you haven’t failed enough before’; it is possible that without failure of any sort, it is hard to fantastically succeed. 

It doesn’t seem to me absolutely wrong to say that failure plays a tremendous role in the journey of success; not the fact of failing but the lessons and bravely you get from those failures. I challenge me, you and everyone reading this to TRY that something new today that has been so terrifying to you and see what HAPPENS! Come back and comment with what have been the result if it doesn’t bother you. 

Author: Jean de Dieu N. (Jado)