The Importance of Failure

I wrote a post on “Why do we fail” awhile back. This got me thinking of failure bit more and this started the digestive process in my head which often leads to these blog posts. In the traditional sense we see failure as a negative thing. Failure is seen as the opposite of success, but is it? For years I thought so. Or maybe I didn’t think, I just took it as that’s the way it is as that’s what the society had taught me. No one encouraged me to fail.

But in the past few months I spent a lot of time reading about successful people and their habits, their thoughts on success and their paths. I’ve become to realise that the Success v Failure mentality what I was force-fed back in the School, is actually one of the many things that has held me back. These extremely successful people have one particular thing in common: all of them failed. But they used the failure as a way to learn. It’s almost like testing a product. You find the weaknesses and you improve it until it has no weaknesses anymore. It’s like learning to walk. You fall down, you get up and repeat this process as long as it take. Until you don’t fall down again.

When I started my first band, I was sure that was it. This is the band that is going to make it. We rehearsed a lot, I wrote most of our music, and I worked hard at it. I even ignored the fact that some of the guys in the band Didn’t see music as a career choice. I had to. It was the only way I could keep driving myself. Obviously that band is long gone and forgotten, apart from a box full of cassettes hidden somewhere. But I learned a lot, it made me a better player, It made me better performer, it made me a better songwriter. Since then there has been several bands that were “The one!” and now are signed to history.

But every one of them taught me a lot. Every one was a stepping stone. So why haven’t I given up? Why would I? Have you ever had a job in a company that went bust? If you did, did you “give up” after you lost your job? I don’t think so. Failure does not mean you are bad at something. It means you found one way of doing something that did not work. Now learn from it. Where did you go wrong? What can you do different next time. Embrace the failure as a great opportunity to learn.

J.P.

The author J.P. Kallio is a singer songwriter
To get two of his free songs go HERE and click Download