To fear failure is to fear succeeding, for without loss, how do we measure success?

Sure we can know we have hit a target or jumped a hurdle. But could we have hit the mark and learned a valuable lesson along the way that might improve our next venture, or could we have jumped the hurdle and cut down our sprint time?

Failing can be painful, physically, emotionally, financially and so on. Failure can have huge costs that stick with us for years, and sometimes we can never recover. But, we have an opportunity here to learn resilience, determination and perseverance. We cannot know these behaviours from just reading a book or watching a movie of the protagonist’s experience. We learn through a transformational change where knowledge is found from within us. We know from the pain and the challenge so profoundly we cannot ever forget the lesson.

The expression, ‘we learn from our mistakes,’ can be too easily thrown away as just a method of soothing and consoling of the hardships experienced in not winning. Simply put, it just wasn’t the right way to reach the goal this time. We can now be grateful instead, as we can be a step ahead of the rest, a foot in front of the others in the race, applying our new knowledge in ways others before us have not or cannot do.

We can invent the bulb that shines the light brightly for all others to see as they now find themselves stood in our shadow

We can choose to live the life of success humbly if we wish, bringing others with us, passing on the hard truths learned along the way of all our failures. Others might not understand fully or appreciate deeply the teachings we offer. But that is a decision we have to make with imparting our wisdom.