Failure: The First Step Toward Success

In the early days of Amazon, founder Jeff Bezos would hang negative press clippings on the wall, frame articles of their failures instead of the positive news that came from their ever-advancing company. Bezos used the failure reminders to keep people hungry, to strive to do more, improve in all areas. Failure was the enemy, not in the sense of being fearful of failure as he wanted everyone to be curious, experiment and invent. Failures for Bezos was viewed as a learning experience, as a pathway to the next big discovery. 

Peter Sims in his excellent book, LITTLE BETS, wrote, “Those favoring a growth mind-set believe that intelligence and abilities can be grown through effort, and tend to view failures or setbacks as opportunities for growth. They have a desire to constantly challenge and stretch themselves.”

And recently, the University of Houston head basketball coach, Kelvin Sampson, attempts to teach his players the value of failure, and how to overcome the setbacks. Sampson believes, “The first step on the ladder of success is always failure. Immature people don’t deal well with failure and immature people don’t understand that there is going to be failure.”

As leaders, we all know we learn more from failures than success. The bigger issue is the one Sampson mentions, how to get young people to understand failure is good? How can we alter their minds from seeing and hearing all the overnight success stories on all their social media platforms. We understand this isn’t as easy as it sounds, since young people deal with peer pressure acceptance of changes in their bodies and brains and a constant search for their identity. Through years comes wisdom and since most immature people are young, it’s hard for them to understand the power of their failures. 

The first thing we need to accomplish is to destroy the image of failure in their minds. We must explain that failure isn’t a bad thing—as long as we understand why and how we failed. From failure we build something far more important than a moment of success. We learned the meaning of resilience, self-awareness, and determination. The path to any great success stories, always involve resilience, self-awareness and determination, so by strengthening those areas, we are igniting a fire inside to propel us forward. If we never face obstacles, or understand our strengths and weaknesses, or how we can build our level of determination, we will fall short of our ultimate goals. We need failure, we want failure, we must accept failure, because every part of failure makes us successful. And having resilience, self-awareness, and determination will always serve us well throughout our entire life. 

When we change our perspective of failure, we change our life and that is what we must teach those who aren’t mature enough yet to understand. 

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