Don’t Fear Failure—It’s Your Best Teacher

If I could give my younger self advice now, it would be something like this: “Never be afraid to fail because it is the best tutor.”

In general, the fear of failure probably is the most crippling emotion, which holds a significant number of people back from knowing their full potential.

Whether starting up your business, venturing into a new career, or simply pursuing your dreams, the fear of failures may fill your mind and withhold you from taking the first step towards attaining your goals. But to be frank, failure isn’t an obstruction to success; very often, it’s bedrock.

Understanding the Fear of Failure

We grow up being made to believe that success is everything in life, and anything less than that is a disaster. In India, with pressures mounted for excellence in academics or career, there’s serious stigma attached to failure. You must have come across stories of children who, after scoring 98%, were asked by well-meaning relatives, “Where did you lose those 2 marks?” Such a mindset inadvertently feeds the fear of falling short.

Brace thine self, and let me ask thee this: what would that be like, if we are not afraid to fail? What if we looked upon failure not as something over but as an avenue toward something better?

As one of India’s most successful business leaders, Ratan Tata once said, “I don’t believe in taking right decisions. I takedecisions and then make them right.” This speaks forward to the idea that perfection isn’t the goal; action is. And with action often comes failure. But it’s what you do after you fail that defines your growth.

Failure as a Teacher: Real-Life Lessons

Look at some of these iconic failure fighters that are from India and have spread all across the globe. Amitabh Bachchan is the megastar of Indian cinema and is regarded as the Shahenshah of Bollywood. He faced glitches in the form of multiple failures during the early stages of his career. Before achieving superstardom, he was rejected by All India Radio on account of his deep voice. His films were flopping, and for a period, he had no work. However, that did not deter him. Taking every setback as a stepping stone, he went on to become one of the greatest actors in the history of Indian cinema.

Steve Jobs: Tomorrow, internationally, the story of Steve Jobs will be an example apart. He was booted out from the very company he helped build from scratch-Apple. At the famous commencement speech at Stanford University, Jobs said, “Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The weight of success was traded for the lightness of the beginner again.” His failures drove him to start another company, NeXT, which would later lead him back into Apple, stronger and more focused than ever.

Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, fondly known as India’s Missile Man and ex-President of India, too faced a lot of setbacks. One of his early projects, the Satellite Launch Vehicle, misfired on the first attempt. That should have crushed him, but the experience was utilized to refine the methods. The project eventuated in success, opening avenues for India’s ambitious programs in outer space. He once said, “If you fail, never give up because F.A.I.L. means ‘First Attempt in Learning.'”

Both these examples basically depict one thing: failure does not define your end; it defines your growth. What runs in common between these is resilience, that is, the ability to pick oneself up, learn from failure, and keep moving on.

The Bamboo Tree Parable

To drive this home, there is a popular parable when it comes to motivational talks: the story of the Chinese bamboo tree.

When one plants a bamboo seed, for the first couple of years, nothing observable occurs.

You water and you cultivate, but nothing seems to appear above ground. It’s very luring to get frustrated, Labour has been ‘wasted’, and the seed has not germinated. But then, in the fifth year, something miraculous happens. In those six weeks,the bamboo tree grows up to 90 feet tall! All that time when it seemed like nothing was happening was the time when the bamboo was building a powerful underground root system, one that would support its fast growth.

If we project this onto failure, it is like a futility of non-movement, so to say, just like that bamboo tree which refuses to grow above the ground. But behind the scenes, those failures are helping you build resilience, experience, and knowledge. And when the time is right, your growth will be explosive.

Success: Turning Failure into Fuel

The question isn’t whether you will fail, because everyone does at one time or another. The question is how you will respond to it. Will you let it define you, or will you allow it to refine you?

Take Walt Disney, for example: fired from a newspaper for “not being creative enough” and running a few businesses inthe ground before finally creating Disneyland. He said famously, “I think it’s important to have a good hard failure when you’re young. I learned a lot out of that because it makes you kind of aware of what can happen to you. Because of it, I’ve never had any fear in my whole life when we’ve been near collapse.”

Disney’s attitude now serves to illustrate how failure, in particular early on, can breed a fearless mindset. Once you know what it feels like to fail, you realize that it does not spell the end of the world. You become less risk-averse and more open to trying new things, taking bolder actions, and thinking bigger.

Conclusion

Fail forward, grow forward. As the Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, “There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.” And very often, our greatest lessons come via our failures. Most people view failure as the opposite of success, when in reality it is just part of the journey to get there. So, little one, do not fear failure; learn from it, embrace it, and may it catapult you toward greatness. Each failure is an opportunity in disguise-your most important teacher if you allow that.

Learn more about how to become a Top Performer at: ORL Leadership Summit 2024.

Dr. Prahlada N.B
MBBS (JJMMC), MS (PGIMER, Chandigarh). 
MBA (BITS, Pilani), MHA, 
Executive Programme in Strategic Management (IIM, Lucknow)
Senior Management Programme in Healthcare Management (IIM, Kozhikode)
Postgraduate Certificate in Technology Leadership and Innovation (MIT, USA)
Advanced Certificate in AI for Digital Health and Imaging Program (IISc, Bengaluru). 

Senior Professor and former Head, 
Department of ENT-Head & Neck Surgery, Skull Base Surgery, Cochlear Implant Surgery. 
Basaveshwara Medical College & Hospital, Chitradurga, Karnataka, India. 

My Vision: I don’t want to be a genius.  I want to be a person with a bundle of experience. 

My Mission: Help others achieve their life’s objectives in my presence or absence!

My Values:  Creating value for others.