“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” – Paulo Coelho
I was so distraught when I found that I have a D in chemistry in my first year of college. Additionally I wasn’t really doing so great in my other science classes. Before this, I was heavily in science since elementary. Chemistry in high school, I believe I average a B (I have to check back on that). What also really got me to that state is the fact that I needed to retake this class to get into a program but also the fact I told myself I was destined to become a Pediatrician. I was dead set and determine ever since middle school (more on that in a different post).
I came to a realization during this time of my life was that I didn’t learn something back in high school and I had to take a quick crash course in college: Learning how to study. This what I was missing back in high school because most things came easy for me, so I hardly failed (there was this one time in high school Human Physiology and Antonym that the teacher failed the whole class but I believe it was some teaching tactic). But the more important thing that came from this realization is knowing failure and knowing what to do with it.
Some people, experience failure more often than other people. I know someone who is scared to do anything because of the fear of failure. But experiencing failure quiet frequently doesn’t equitation knowing failure. It’s like saying that since you breathe a lot, you should know the intricacies of how oxygen travels into the alveoli of the lungs and through what mechanism does CO2 is excreted out. (Kinda shows my medical background) Anyways, experience it frequently does not mean you know it.
Knowing failure means knowing the options of failure, and how to correct/overcome them. It sounds like a pessimistic way of thinking and can viewed as a negative but it’s more so problem solving. I often told my friends when they are deciding what to do, the worst thing that could happen is that they could die. In the game of chess, you would often think what’s your opponent best move, and how to either prevent it from happening or work around it.
The thing is about chess is that everything known (except the other person’s choice, so that isn’t much a read), but take for example a card game like Texas Hold Up (The interesting thing about this post is that I am currently writing this while in Vegas). Everything can be calculated out but it isn’t certain what the outcome will be, that’s where we know what is failure meaning. we know what where we going to failure. If we are able to correct the failures or avoid them, prior to them happening. That’s the ultimate reward of knowing failure is increasing the chances of winning.
What is your life’s failures? Is it possibly your most valuable learning experience? Did you find a better place?
So you know your failures, what’s next? The thing two things is finding our passion and exploring our strengths.
The Lazy Employee 