I think we all need to embrace failure. There, I said it. And it’s true. Failure leads to life lessons that can’t be taught. The point is we all encounter failure in our lives and it helps make us who we are and hopefully to become who we want to be.
You can’t read or listen to the news these days without hearing about the college admissions scandal. In case you somehow have missed this news item, many well-heeled parents paid money to help bribe their children’s way into certain universities. In some cases this included cheating on the SAT, and in others having the child be “recruited” by a university sports coach for a sport the child never participated in. Some of the children knew this was happening, while others didn’t.
When I first heard about the scandal, I thought about the helicopter parent, safety-net parenting that is very common these days. No parent who is honest looks forward to their child not “winning” or facing loss or failure. But if that is how you parent you need to ask yourself how your child will deal with defeat, which we all deal with in the real world.
Most people didn’t get into every college they applied to. Most people probably have experienced not receiving a job offer they were hoping for. But these are real occurrences people have happen and need to be able to deal with. The cliché that you learn more from failure than success exists because it’s true. If you think back through your life you know this is accurate whether in relation to the college application scenario, employment, personal relationships and so many other situations.
So embrace failure. This doesn’t mean we have to look for it or hope it happens. But when it does, look at the lessons the situation presents, because they will be many. By doing so you will grow as a person and hopefully avoid similar failures in the future.
