“Today, though, I’ve come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.” – Tony Robbins

We are pretty well the result of past failures. Almost everything that we’ve learned is the result of failures. It started as toddlers. We learned to walk by falling down, we learned to talk my making bizarre sounds and we learned to eat by ourselves by smearing food all over our face.

We learn by failing yet we see failures as a dreaded enemy. However that’s how it should be. Without pain, failures would be useless. It is the pain attached to failure that is the real teacher. That pain is the motivator that forces us to improve and become able to succeed where we failed before.

If we desire to learn, expand and grow, we have to change the way that we see failure. Failure is a teacher and a motivator that must be seen as such. Every new experiment is an exercise in failure. That’s how we learn and improve. That’s what we’ve been doing all our life without knowing it.

Everyone who enjoys greater success than we do has failed more times than we have. Winners have a love-hate relationship with failure. That is, they love the lessons that failures teach but they hate failures enough that they’ll do whatever it takes not to fall prey to its grip.

That love-hate relationship has to be calibrated so that the hate does not turn into such fear of failure as to lead to over cautiousness and paralysis. A great many beautiful projects never left the ground because of that exaggerated fear of failure. Some failures are part of the game of life and cannot be escaped but it cannot be allowed to rule our life.

It is also very important to note that failures should not be viewed as personal defeats or as character flaws. There may have been some lack of information or maybe some overly optimistic judgments but if a sincere effort was made and the project failed, there should be no self-blame and certainly no sense of guilt.

It is said of Donald Trump that before embarking on a new venture, he will consider the downside and if he knows that he can handle that, he will go ahead with the project. In other words, Mr. Trump will evaluate the worst possible scenario and if it proves to be something from which he can financially recover, he will go ahead with the project.

That’s a pretty levelheaded way of appraising the situations. There is a possible downside to any worthwhile project. There is always a distinct possibility of failure. But if the project is worthy enough and the possible failure is not of catastrophic proportion, the anchor should be lifted and the project set on its way.

Failures are a part of life. They should be respected but not overly feared. They should be avoided if at all possible but not taken personally if they do occur. Even with the greatest stretch of the imagination they could never be considered to be pleasant, but they are our best teachers. So, if we ever aspire to any meaningful level of success, we must learn to cohabitate with failures.

Finally, it must be understood that, overall, the fear of failure causes more harm than the consequences of failure. When an exaggerated fear of failure prevents us from even trying to do something worthwhile with our life, failure has won. And that is the ultimate failure.

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