Failure Doesn’t Have To Be A Negative Word

A failed anything makes me sad, or rather I need to say it use to make me sad. Failure comes across as a dark word. It’s all doom and gloom as we think of the particular thing not working or failing. It’s not a word that makes you think all warm and fuzzy skippy thoughts is it?

But what if we view failure as something different. Its part of what I am learning to do and I am loving this new thought process. Let me explain.

When you look up the word failure in the dictionary it uses words like unsuccessful, lack of success, subnormal quality and non-functioning. So that rather suggests that there is either a goal, it can be measured/graded or something it is supposed to do.

Right? Still with me?

So if you had something in your life, an object say a pen. It’s a beautiful pen but it doesn’t work. The button thing doesn’t press down or the shape of the pen doesn’t fit your hand making you have crappy handwriting with it. So basically the pen doesn’t do what it is supposed to do. You would put it in the bin without a second thought and get a new pen. Or maybe you have a chair. It’s a nice chair and it even fits under the table just right but it’s very wobbly. I mean so wobbly you know it’s going to collapse as the quality just isn’t there. You would source a new chair that was better quality. Again not really giving it a second thought. But using the words from the dictionary both items are failures. Do we beat ourselves over having 2 objects that are failures? No. Did we constantly wail ‘ why don’t you work? ‘ Again no.

Instead, we recognized the objects were not meeting our needs. We processed that in nanoseconds and moved on. We learned from it. We know what types of a pen or chair don’t work for us.

So failure doesn’t have to be a dark word but it can be an ‘aha’ moment. It can be us recognizing something doesn’t work, fit or below standards and we know we have a second chance of finding the perfect pen and chair. If we change our thought process from negative to positive it gives the word failure a whole new exciting meaning. It’s also very liberating knowing that failure will no longer hold you back but propel you forward instead.