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How to Grow Through Failure
Yeah, it might hurt, but it’s an important part of life, and an essential part of success
If you’re like most people in the world, you’ve failed a lot more than you’d like to admit.
I know I have. Big failures. I mean, big, honkin’, capital-letter LIFE MISTAKES. And, yet, I’m still here, still alive, still walking through life with all its twists and turns.
And I’m sure that’s true for you. We all get through our failures; somehow we make it to the other side. And we’re better for what we’ve learned, how much we’ve grown, with maybe a little extra humility and compassion for our fellow humans, who also fail and dust themselves off and start again.
When it comes down to it, failure makes us better people. It gets our attention, shakes us up a bit, and helps us see more clearly. We get a fresh perspective.
In fact, failure is mandatory.
So, let’s imagine a world where failure is celebrated instead of feared — where every stumble is seen as a step closer to success. In this alternate universe, Thomas Edison would have thrown the most epic failure party after trying 10,000 times to invent the light bulb. Michael Jordan would have high-fived his teammates after missing a game-winning shot. And Oprah Winfrey would have famously said, “YOU get a failure, and YOU get a failure. EVERYBODY gets a failure!” Woo-hoo!
Failure would no longer be the enemy, but the secret weapon to ultimate success.
And this isn’t just a pep talk to try to keep you optimistic. This is science!
Massive study on failure
In research using one of the strangest and most diverse sets of data ever compiled, a study at Northwestern University made it clear that failure is essential. Dashun Wang, associate professor of management and organizations at Northwestern, and his colleagues analyzed almost 800,000 grant applications that had been submitted to the National Institutes of Health over a 30-year period. Then they examined 46 years’ worth of…
