It’s Ok to Fail

“There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.”

— Oprah

I don’t want to do this, because I know I will fail. I hear this statement many times. Failure is not a ghost which will kill us; failure is a fresh  opportunity to do things in a better way. If we do not fail, then how will we succeed? We should not drop our plans just because we will fail, nor should  we postpone them. Here, I would love to share a failure story of the most successful person:

  Speaking at Harvard University’s  graduation event, J.K. Rowling spoke about failures:

“You might never fail on the scale I did, But it is impossible to live without failing at something , unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”

When Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book, she was already divorced, bankrupt, and on welfare. After a dozen publishers rejected her manuscript one finally agreed to publish it. But the publisher told Rowling that she needed to get a job because there’s no money in children’s books. She’s now a billionaire.

If Rowling had not tried we would not have Harry Potter today.  This is how failure creates magic in our life. We all know about Steve Jobs. He got rejected from an IT company and now we all know who he is. We hear millions of success stories as well as stories of failures. I read somewhere, “Read more failure stories than successful stories because failure stories will force us to think about the reason why they failed and we will take care of that thing next time”.  This is how this works.

Merely repeating the same mistakes again will not do. It is very important to learn something new from our mistakes. It is also essential to note that there is more than one way of doing the same thing and it is not necessary that the way we have tried is the most appropriate. Again, it is not necessary that everything in a project is to be done by you only. This is a sure-shot way to be a failure. Teamwork and the foresight to delegate are two essentials. Moreover, are you getting the best out of your team? One can point out the mistakes done by the members also in a more positive manner.

 Go try something new, be fearless. As many times you will fail, you will be honing your skills and preparing the recipe for sure success. So go on, explore yourself and give it time. 

Keep Smiling,

Thank you,

Riya Om