Why Failure is the Only Way to Success

In our society, we have been conditioned to think of failure as a bad thing, when in fact, failure actually leads to success. 

Why do we think of failure as a bad thing?

We’ve spent our entire lives being taught that failure is the opposite of success, not a foundational brick to help build it. It might feel a bit backward to think failure as a good thing, but I’ll explain to you exactly why it is.

Starting when we’re little kids, we’re taught that failure means embarrassment. We spend 12 years in school, conditioning our brains during our formative years that if you get a question wrong in class, the teacher might reject you. If you mess up a word during a book report presentation, you might get laughed at. If you get a low grade on a test, that red ink labels you as a failure.

Basically, if you failed in school you could humiliate yourself and become rejected by your peers or mentors. This triggers a biological fear in our brains. Humans are social creatures. We need each other to survive. Our brains have evolutionarily developed the need for approval. Think about it, early hunters and gatherers needed their tribe to help them survive the day to day. If you were outcasted from that tribe, more than likely, you were gonna die.

Luckily, we don’t have to hunt mammoths or gather berries anymore, but that evolutionary need for social approval is still stuck in our brains. It’s about time we reframed failure as a bad thing and start to look at it how failure leads to success.

You won’t learn anything if you never fail

Okay, personally, I believe there’s no such thing as perfect. But, let’s imagine a world where you did things perfectly every time. You would never learn anything. There would never be any improvements made, no innovations created. The world would be boring. Functional, maybe. But boring overall. 

According to Nobel Prize winner, Robert Lefkowitz, “Science is 99 percent failure, and that’s an optimistic view.” If scientists looked at failure as a bad thing, the world would be a very different place than it is now. We’d probably still be hunting mammoths and picking berries to survive the day.

Failure leads to success because the only way you ever learn anything is by trying, failing, trying something different, and finally succeeding. I mean, how can you know where to improve if you never fail?

Fear of failure keeps you in limbo

Procrastination is a direct manifestation of the fear of failure. Think about the last time you procrastinated on something. It was probably something important that needed to get done, and yet you avoided doing it because you felt intense anxiety, dread, or fear around getting started. 

Have you ever stopped to think why you felt that anxiety in the first place? It’s likely because you imagined something bad happening if you did the thing you were procrastinating doing. Something bad, like failure. 

That fear of failure keeps you in limbo. When you procrastinate, you don’t do anything to move forward, and so you are forever stuck in this in-between state. Destined to stay where you are until you vanquish that fear to try.

The only way to fail is to give up

If you find yourself frozen in limbo by the fear of failing, try reframing it this way— The only way to truly fail is to give up. 

Thomas Edison’s famous quote says, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” The key is not to avoid failure. We know already that that won’t work. The key is to get back up and try again. That is how failure leads to success.

If you never give up, your success will be inevitable. As simple as that. It doesn’t matter how many “failures” it takes to get there. As long as you keep trying, even if it’s 10,000 failed attempts later, You Will Succeed. Verses, if you give up you will get comfortable in your defeat and you will spend your entire life wondering what might have been if you’d only tried again.

Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and Henry Ford are all bonafide failures, but they didn’t give up. Can you imagine how different our world would be if these failures and so many others who helped shape our society gave up after their first or second try?

---

---

Build up your resilience

Failure is like a muscle. The first time you fail, it’s going to be hard. You’re going to feel a mixture of emotions, none of them very pleasing. But, if you get up and try again, the next time you fail, it will be easier. 

Failing makes you resilient. Eventually, you will have failed so much and so often, that you won’t even recognize it as defeat anymore. Your setbacks will be data that you learn from and then move on, incorporating what you learned into your new strategy. 

Failing teaches you humility. When you fail, you recognize that you don’t know everything. You’re able to acknowledge your limitations and become open to new ideas. 

Failure also teaches us what we want and don’t want. Some people are born lucky enough to know exactly what they want out of life, straight out of the womb. The rest of us bastards need to figure it out for ourselves through trial and error. I’m one of those people who are in the middle. I always knew I wanted to be a writer and an entrepreneur, but I also tried (and failed at) building half a dozen businesses in my twenties before I knew what I wanted to do for a career. 

I’m gonna give it to you straight: you’re gonna fail sometimes. That’s life. But, if you look at those failures as lessons and learn from your experiences, you 100% are going to be ahead of the curve. 

Get rid of unhelpful stories

First off, know this— if you’ve faced failure, it is never too late to try again. Whatever story you’ve got playing through your head on why you can’t go after what you want, is just a story. I don’t care if you think you’re too old, you’re too young, you’re too this, or too that. Or if you don’t see a representation of people like you doing what you want to do. I don’t care if you’ve got generational curses if you’ve messed up in the past, or whatever story you’re trying to promote. You are absolutely, 100% capable of finding success, no matter who you are. 

These stories playing through your mind are limiting beliefs. And they can be worked through if you have the strength to try. I’m not saying that success comes easy. You might have a difficult road ahead of you, we all do. Life isn’t meant to be easy. This is a wild, crazy adventure filled with ups, downs, uppercuts, and jabs. But if you make a decision to take life a little less seriously, and appreciate both the bumps and the dips, you’re gonna have a hell of a time.

So now you know… Failure leads to success

Failure isn’t a bad thing like we were conditioned to believe as kids. It’s perfectly fine not to get straight As in life, in fact, it’s even better. You are much more likely to succeed if you allow yourself to fail and you see those failures as lessons rather than defeat. As long as you never give up, your success will be inevitable. And that’s straight fact.

Create a positive, success-driven mindset with the help of these amazing books

So now what? You know that failure leads to success, but how do we train our brains to accept failure and think like a successful person does? Our minds are incredible tools. We are able to change the way our brain thinks through the phenomenon of neuroplasticity. But… As powerful as our brains are, they can’t just change on their own overnight. They need a little help. That’s where the world of personal development books comes in.

I know, I know. Cue the eye rolls. But I’m serious. This genre of books has literally changed my mindset, and therefore it has also changed my life. I seriously recommend the following books as a starting point to help you develop a successful mindset.

Do you enjoy posts that boost your mindset like Why Failure is the Only Way To Success? ? Then you might also enjoy How to Lower Your Anxiety Now: 5 Easy Hacks You Can Use in the Moment!

Booking.com