Fail? Nah

Nobody likes to fail. To feel your self-esteem crashing right to the bottom, and feel like a walking disaster is never a good feeling. Basically, it is like a abyss that sucked big time.

I've failed many many times over. I've cried my voice hoarse, screamed my heart out, cursed the examiners. It had been really really bad. You won't know how bad it was until you've gone through it. But I won't say I've gone through life as a failure, because I never really have. Contradictory? It might be, but to truly fail is to give up after you fail. It's what you do after you fail that determines whether you really fail or not.

"A man who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it."

~ Alexandre Dumas, fils ~

Failure is only temporary. You've merely postponed your success. If you've already reached the trough (the lowest point) of your life's curve. There is only one other way to go... UP!

But yet, many people who fail crumple under the weight of the defeat. They sit crushed, and never pulling themselves up ever again, because they believe that they are finished. Remember, failure is not dead-end street. But if you stop yourself from driving down another road, to discover the possiblities, work out the kinks, you've really failed. Countless of success stories have their origin in failure. Maybe they're ahead of your time or did not get the formula right. Whatever it was, they never give up.

Failure is not an event, it is the process that lead to the event. So, it was perhaps during the duration of the journey where something, somehow did not work out right. Then, rather then let the event crush you, let it invigorate you to discover what went wrong, and then fine-tune your process to make it work better.  If you see failure as part of achieving a greater good of knowing what does not work, then the courage that you've in times of failure makes you more resilient.

Failing challenges your psychological strength, pushing you to your highest limit. That breaking point of failure is the full extent of your resources and capabilites. Like high jump, you keep challenging yourself to raise the bar again and again. That critical height is where you stretch yourself to the fullest. If you do what you do and succeed, you are not stretching hard to realise your full potential because it's too easy for you. If you succeed the first time, then be afraid, be very afraid. LOL.

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall." ~ Confucius

When you fail, it means your bar has been raised. And over the long haul, if you don't give up, that failure by boost you to higher level of performance. It takes a lot of courage to stand up and do it all over again. But to stay defeated for life sucks more.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. ~ Thomas Edison