Failure sucks. When you have fallen short of reaching your goals, you cannot help but feel a tremendous blow to your confidence and self-worth. As the antithesis of success, failure is a condition that we strive to avoid in all of our efforts. But by doing this, we may miss the beauty of failure.
Failure is beautiful? Say what now?
It’s inevitable that in everything we pursue in life, we are bound to meet a bunch of trials along the way. That is just something that cannot be prevented. As desirable as smooth sailing may be, without the ups and downs of life, how would we encounter great adventure? We wouldn’t! Because of those bumps on the road, you will eventually uncover treasure in the forms of knowledge and opportunity. How else would we improve our skills, grow as individuals, expand our mindsets, AND be introduced to incredible experiences if it wasn’t for the challenges brought by failure?
Failure is the ultimate test of your inner strength, patience, and faith.
During the first half of 2012, I went through one of the most excruciating trials that I have ever experienced—learning how to drive. After taking professional driving lessons and obtaining countless practice hours, I was a confident driver–that is until I took my first road test. I failed my test not once, but FOUR TIMES before passing the exam on the fifth try. Throughout the five months that it took me to become a licensed driver, my self-esteem was at an all-time low; I spent a considerable amount of time burying myself in shame and self-pity, and fearing that I would never be able to prove myself good enough to get licensed. I soon realized that it was not an effective use of my time to sulk over my unfavourable results. Instead, I challenged myself to take the constructive criticism I received to build upon the skills I was already good at and become even greater. If those examiners didn’t see me as a competent driver, well then I was just going to have to prove them wrong! On July 25th, I finally reached my goal and became a licensed novice driver. This achievement was a product of my hard work and unyielding ‘drive’!
Take it from a four-time failure, anything is possible with perseverance.
Next time, when you come face to face with failure, don’t fear it…embrace it.
Find the beauty in failure.
The Hudsucker 
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[…] Most of the time failure is not a life-and-death matter, but it still sucks. Why? Because of how it makes us feel about ourselves. We feel inept. We want to give up. We vow, “I’m never going to do that again.” What if failure didn’t mean ANYTHING about us? What if failure just meant something did not work? What if when something doesn’t work, we just say, “Hmmn. That didn’t work. I’m going to give it another go.” or “OK. I’m going to try something else.” Read more: https://thehudsucker.com/2012/08/14/the-beauty-of-failure/ […]