Do you triumph over your failures or they triumph over you?
The tragedy of your failure is not the matter but what you do when you fail is what makes your trial worth it or not.
Failure is the condition or state of not meeting a desirable or expected objective. It’s the opposite of success. It’s the inability to achieve or meet success. Sometimes, it is used to regard persons.
No matter what you know about failure, always have in mind and never forget this: ‘Failure is not a person but an occurrence'. Like I said, some persons may regard other as failures but one has to fail before he is called a failure, it’s an event in which a person participated. The event didn’t go well so it adopted a new name, 'failure'. You see, it’s the name of an event not the name of a person.
Some persons we celebrate or know today as legends once failed. Let’s discuss in some details the failures some of them.
Albert Einstein
Genius in theoretically physics, inventor of the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein didn’t have everything in his life going smoothly. As a child he started speaking fluently at an older age than expected, he didn’t start talking until he was 3 years old. After college graduation, he was jobless for two years. At first, he wasn’t celebrated for his being genius, but when his discoveries and theories were proven, his value was discovered by men. He became the genius we now know because he was relentless, despite his unfortunate situations.
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison was an inventor known for his notable invention, the light bulb; an experiment he tried a thousand times, which became successful the one thousand and one time. When a comment was made regarding his lack of results he responded, saying, “Results! why man, I have gotten lots of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work!”. Thomas was a famous and successful inventor and entrepreneur in his time.
Henry Ford
An inventor and business man. Didn’t get much education, failed many times before he was able to come up with an automobile design that was market worthy. His business partner withdrew from partnership with him. Even after beginning his automobile company, his automobiles still failed with certain flaws in design. He learned from these mistakes and they were tools for a better automobile design. Note: His background wasn’t the reason for his success.
Steve Jobs
I am sure that you must have heard of Steve Jobs before, he was a big time inventor and business man. He founded 3 companies, one of which he was a co-founder. The road for him wasn’t smooth at the beginning. As the founder of Apple, he was once fired and kicked out of his company. Despite this, he still pushed on and didn’t give on himself, moving on to found another company, Pixar Studio, and NeXt which failed and was sold.
Abraham Lincoln
Born into a poor family, had an ambition for politics, lost eight elections, failed twice in business, suffered from an health issue. After much persistence, he later became the President of the United States of America.
Take this to heart: Failure is an opportunity to succeed.
It’s the same principle that the men highlighted above used to achieve success. When you fail, you should learn from your errors and improve. Failures do not write you up, it’s how you handle it that matters. Our case studies all failed at some point in their lives. They had their moments of discouragement but what mattered the most was how they handled their failures and pushed forward. Life will not answer to your emotion of pain, grief nor sorrows; even your happy moments can’t make it bend for you. Certain principles make things happen for you in life. These principles are not emotional, they work just as the principle of 'whatever goes up must come down'. We can’t change them, but we can understand them and manipulate them to work in our benefit. Some of such principles are Consistency and Persistence.
Don’t give up on your dreams, you might just be a step away from beginning your moments of glory. Thanks for reading.