Failure Is Not the End

I’m not here to say there is no such thing as failure. Failure is very real, but it is not an end destination -- it's another event in the course of life.

Experiencing one failure or 100 does not make you a failure. Failure is an external event that happens. It is not a personality characteristic. One who fails a lot, we could say, takes a lot of risks. It's important to separate the events of failure from the personal characteristic of being a failure.

Failure is an opportunity to learn. When we confuse our personal sense of self-value with success, we are restricting our ability to learn because our ego becomes another factor in this equation. Our ego tells us we succeeded because we're so smart and so great, or that we failed because we are a loser and can't win at anything.

Likewise, success can equally blind us from learning. Just like failure, success is an external event and does not necessarily define you as a winner. Many well-to-do people who have experienced success make the mistake of believing they did it all on their own, forgetting the team and support that helped them achieve their goals. Of course, they made good decisions at the right time, worked hard and achieved success, but in almost all cases, there were other team members who assisted in the win.

So as much as there's  more to life than success, of great important to note is that failure in itself is not the end thereof but a means to the end tagged success.