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It could be that you’re just a screw-up, but that would mean that everyone who ever failed at anything is also a screw-up. History is littered with huge successes that failed miserably for a while before hitting it big. Everyone messes up. Don’t kid yourself, it’s not just you. The real challenge is in finding what the failure means. What it means about your function, your endeavor, your risk.
Don’t miss the message. Failure is telling you something important. There’s a vital message in your failure. It’s saying to you “…next time, try a little to the left….”
You may be headed down the wrong road, but even the right road has bumps, sometimes big bumps. It’s really important to look at your situation as objectively as possible. This can be difficult. The struggle to attain a personal goal can be very challenging. If you’ve been The Golden Child in your family, you might feel the pressured to always do well. This is a big strain since no one is perfect. As hard as it may be, give up any attempt to reach perfection.
You will fail. Everyone fails. Just make sure you see what the failure is telling you. You need to think of failure as a corrective tool. Something to learn from. There’s valuable information in the experience, even if the feeling is awful. If your working toward your goal leads to you falling short, you need to figure out why. Even if you give up the goal, you need to see the learning. Most individuals think that screwing up means you need to give up.
Wrong. You just need to do things differently.
The goal may be mistaken. Maybe it’s someone else’s goal for you to be a great pianist or earn a graduate degree. Perhaps you’re pursuing this goal because you think the attainment of it will make you feel better about yourself. You might be going after this goal because you’re trying to follow a successful parent (or trying not to follow a successful parent) or because, for whatever reason, you think you ought to seek this.
The path is probably long and difficult. You need to pursue goals for the right reasons—for you. Because you like the process (not the failure part) or because achieving the goal feels like part of who you are.
You might need to mull over why you’re going after this goal, but risking failure should never keep you from seeking.
The only way not to fail is to never try anything. That leads to a sad, sad life (which is really the ultimate failure). Failure results from trying and not reaching. No matter what ball you're trying to hit, you're going to miss it first. Failure is a fundamental part of success and it needs to be viewed as giving corrective information, not as a reflection of self-worth.
Go ahead. Chase a dream. Just make sure you use failure as a tool, not a judgment of you.
