When have you ever failed at something?

When have you ever failed at something that was important to you, whether in school, at home,work, with your friends or anywhere else? How did you react to that failure? Did anything positive come out of it? What?

…true leaders understand the importance of making mistakes and learning from them. In a legendary graduation speech at Stanford University, in 2005, Steve Jobs emphasized the importance of failure to success, particularly after he was fired, at age 30, from Apple, the company he co-founded. “It turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” he said. “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life.”

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Responses

  1. Yes Gael, I have had failures in life, it just made me more determined to try again until I succeeded, i guess an inner strength drives me to stay with the game until a negative can turn into a positive, never give up, think I may have inherited an inner strength from my Mom……ssome times nature sometimes nurture or may be a little of both …..

  2. I don’t look on anything as being a failure……..never have…………always something to be learned from everything we do………..just take the positive from it, even if it’s a mistake not to be repeated again…xx

    1. What a brilliant outlook, Star.

      I’ve certainly had my fair share of failure in my lifetime. For the purposes of this discussion I will recall the time I lost a job.

      I was working in New York City as a layout artist and it was at the height of the summer. Which made the commute from New Jersey which involved two buses and a train, torturous. It seemed impossible for me to get there in time which put me in a bad light and some other factors conspired to result in my being fired.

      However, as upsetting as it was at the time, I wound up getting another job in the same field in New Jersey which could drive to and had far better working conditions.

      So one door closes another one opens!

  3. Gael, I like Starlette’s answer. We should realize that we have to learn as we go. We all know that we have to keep trying or just do our best, but I feel we should also know that we may need to find what we can do as in the song, “know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to pick up the cards and walk away”.
    I have failed many times and in most cases, I lacked adequate skills or I was involved with another key person who failed to do their part.
    The only job that I totally succeeded in was the one job with a perfect supervisor.

  4. I like blogs ending with a question Gael.
    Three years ago I wrote a blog about “My Reiki Experience” on Seniorchatters. In the fall of 2001 was about the lowest that I had felt in my life. Although there were no signs on the outside, I was struggling to see the light of day.
    Goals have been important to me since then. Not so much to attain them as it is to have direction in my life.

    1. Sounds like you have a handle on your outlook on life, David. Not everyone achieves that.

      I can certainly identify with goal setting. I do it all the time. I find it encourages motivation and can give a great deal of satisifaction. Even when the goals are not attained, there can be a sense of accomplishment just knowing you had made a sincere effort.