The Risk of Failure

Hey there folks!

 

I know the title sounds rather depressing today but bear with me for a moment. A very simple truth about this life is that bad things are going to happen. No matter how many of your life’s endeavors meet success the people you love will die, as will you. Therefore, pain is an inevitable part of the human condition. I do not care whether you are part of the 1% or the 99% pain, suffering, and failure will touch your life in some meaningful form. So if we can accept this as a universal truth then what good does it ever do to fear failure?

 

This is one of the reasons I get really aggravated by defeatist attitudes. You may be saying, “wait a minute isn’t assuming that failure is an inevitable part of life defeatist”? I can understand why one would think that but here is where I believe the difference rests. I believe that failure will happen to me in a general sense. I do not know when or where it may appear in my life, only that it will appear. So I still throw myself completely into every endeavor I choose to undertake and operate with the belief in my own success. I suppose the easiest way to say this is that I believe that failure is a temporary condition. If I try now and fail it does not mean I am done forever, I simply need to learn my lesson and try again.

 

It is so easy to let one of life’s temporary set backs get you down and influence the entire way you see the world, and I am certain we all know at least one of those people. I have talked about them before, you know the person that has experienced pain and now believes that they understand the harsh truth of the world so they more or less shit all over any and all of your ideas, dreams, and ambitions. Even though we all know that person, how often have you ever met a successful person with that disposition? I know that I have never met any; in fact, every time I meet people with the kind of negative outlook on things I described their situation in life is every bit as shitty as my own.

 

I know I have said this before and I am sure I will repeat this many times, but failure is a necessary component of success. The greatest people in this world have failed more often than they succeeded, because all it takes for success is that one time.

 

At this point I am sure you are wondering what my damn point is and really this is simply an affirmation of my beliefs. While I do not encourage thoughtless actions, I refuse to allow fear to influence what I choose to do with my life. I no longer have time for negativity disguised as pragmatism. From this point forward I not only accept that failure will happen, I choose to embrace it because I know that every failure I experience will bring me that much closer to success. Success is never a guarantee but the only way to achieve great things is to put yourself out there and expose yourself to the risk of failure.