So what is failure? And why is it good for you? Well, let's take a look. But first, as you might have guessed, go ahead and get out some paper and a pen. We're just going to do a little bit of writing just a few notes. So once you get out that piece of paper, let's begin, I hit pause real quickly.
Okay, let's continue. What is failure? I'm actually asking you, What is your definition of failure? Now, hold on a minute. Don't look in the dictionary. I want you to think of your own personal definition as best you can.
It can be what you remember from the dictionary or what you learned in life or you heard from your parents, or it can be your own personal definition. What is failure to you? Go ahead, push pause and write down one or two sentences defining failure as it applies to you. How about this Question. Have you ever failed? Sure, it's an obvious answer.
Everybody fails, right? Well, I'd like you to think of a time that you failed. Now, the bigger the better if you have failed, big, fantastic. So take a moment. Think of some point in your life where you really tried. You did your best, but you failed.
Okay, can you think of something? Again? Write down that experience. In a couple words, a sentence, two, three sentences. It doesn't matter. Just briefly describe that experience of you failing.
Rk. I have it, are you ready? failure is unavoidable and necessary, not what you were expecting from me, right? This isn't really a definition of failure. But this is the truth about failure. And this is what I really want you to understand and embrace throughout the rest of this.
Lesson number one, you can't avoid failing. Number two, it's necessary. It's for your own benefit. So Are any of you Batman fans by chance? I'm not necessarily a fan, but I have seen the movies. And in one of the movies, I don't remember which one, Bruce Wayne or Batman as a child happened to fall down.
And his father had a lesson for him. And he said, Son, why do we fall so we can learn to pick ourselves back up? That's brilliant. To me. Failure is the foundation that learning is based upon, think about how many times you had to fall in order to ride a bike, how many mistakes you needed to make in order to learn a new skill? How about to become a master at that skill?
Imagine how many times you need to fail then you shouldn't think negatively about failure because it's unavoidable. It's necessary, and it has several benefits that you should keep in mind. And what are those benefits? Well, let's look at eight of them. Here's eight reasons while failure is good. Number one, embrace failure because as I already said, Everyone fails.
Beware of social media Ladies and gentlemen, people post only the highlights of their lives and enhance the images and stories to make them look even better than they are. Your Facebook feed can make you feel like a lesser of a person. Because you might not feel like you have the life you should. But SNS isn't reality, right? Everybody struggles and fails these failures or reality checks and teach us a little humility. without failure.
We might not reflect on our lives and appreciate what we have, and we'll see later appreciation is a key to happiness. Number two, failure makes you dig deeper and reach new understandings without failure. We might not reflect on our lives and appreciate what we have. Failure helps us reflect on the journey of life and what we want and where we're going. This reflection opens up new solutions to the problems we face. new opportunities arise.
Number three, failure emboldens the mind making you stronger. Frederick Douglass once said that, without struggle, there can be no progress. And how true is that every person who is truly successful in which was not given to them by family or handed to them in some way, has gone through some degree of difficulties. It's these difficulties that make people stronger and push them to realize their goals. Number four, through failure, you learn life lessons that can't be learned from success. If you were always successful and never failed, what would you really learn?
This idea is of course related to other reasons on the list, but Something to remember when you're faced with failure in the future, you'll find yourself possibly deciding to continue or to give up, what will be your choice and why. Number five, failure makes you search for new ways of doing things. Thomas Edison is famous for failing over 10,000 times to invent a commercially viable electric light bulb, but he never gave up. He viewed each failed attempt as a learning experience. Finally, after persistence, invented a stable working light bulb that changed human progress everywhere. Quite often, we need to work hard and continue to struggle before we solve the puzzles we're working on.
Number six, failure makes you more empathetic to the plight of others. Failure helps you better understand others unfortunate situations. If you've experienced a similar struggle as someone else Then you can empathize with them much more and better understanding people and the situations in the world leads to better connections with others, and a better sense of morality and ethics. And we need these things to build better futures for ourselves, our children and those around us. Number seven, knowing that it's okay to fail, allows you to take more risks in life. Remember, at the beginning of this lesson, we saw a quote, there's only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve the fear of failure.
Well fear at least irrational fear is your biggest enemy in so many things in life, the fear of public speaking, the fear of talking to that girl or boy you like fear of asking questions, fear of trying something new fear of being successful, it's a much bigger risk to not try than to try and now Now that you know that failure is a teaching tool, you may become more ready to take on bigger, yet smarter risks that lead to successes. And finally, success tastes far sweeter after major failures. You may have heard a saying similar to how can you appreciate the good without first knowing the bad, or you can't appreciate the light without the dark. If you rarely fail and only have small failures, then you will not really enjoy your successes. However, the opposite is true. Once you've struggled, failed, and then succeeded, that moment will be like no other.
It will feel fantastic. And it will motivate you to continue developing yourself more into who you want to be. Therefore, to wrap things up on what is failure, and why is it good for you? Well, we looked at how to define failure. I asked you to define failure for yourself. Then I told you the simple truth about failure that is unavoidable and necessary.
And finally, we looked at the eight reasons that failure is good. So having said that, let's get ready for an interesting activity called the failure toss in the next lesson, coming up