Failure bothers us. We view events in life as success or failures, putting pressure on us when things don’t go our way. We spend our lives going through the highs of success and the lows of failure. We have pegged our happiness to success and our sorrow to failure. To remove sorrow from our life, we have to revisit how we view failure.

Failure is just an outcome. Outcomes that are not as per our expectations give us deeper insights and learnings, preparing us better for our next round of effort. Failure teaches us.

When we don’t succeed at first, if taken in the right spirit, we develop the grit and determination to try harder. Failure motivates us.

In spite of our best efforts, we often don’t succeed. When we analyse the cause-effect principle at play, we may well discover that we need a completely different approach. Failure makes us creative and innovative.

Sometimes we change the course of our lives after a major setback only to realise that we are in a much better place. Failure guides us.

We have a very high opinion of ourselves and when times are good we tend to get carried away. When events take a turn and we find ourselves in a vulnerable situation, we realise our insignificance against the forces of life. Failure makes us humble.

When we go through tough times and recover, we feel grateful for things being in place, and if we have learnt through our experience, we stop taking things for granted. Failure builds our gratitude.

There is a true story of a man who was born in a poor family, lost his job, was defeated to State Legislature, failed in business, had a nervous breakdown, defeated when he ran for Congress, again defeated running for Congress, defeated for the US Senate, defeated for Vice-President, again defeated for Senate and then went on to become the President of America. Abraham Lincoln did not treat failure as a failure.

When we recognise failure and success as just outcomes to learn from and move on in life, we will realise that viewing things as a failure, is a fallacy.

(Pic-The tree outside the building where I grew up)