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Why I care about failure and how it can fuel you to new levels

The reason I give a shit about failure is that we all fail.  It is a fact of human life.  And if we all fail, what are we supposed to do with all of this failure that's been piling up?  For me, personally, I didn't know what to do with all of the failure.  It sat and sat and sat.  Eventually, it began affecting my ability to perform at a level I'm comfortable with (and to be clear, when I am not performing at a high level, I get this existential itch that bothers the hell out of me).

A brief detour: a paradox is a statement or situation that seems to contradict itself or go against common sense.  

Returning to the point: failure, at least the way we view it, is a bit of a paradox.  That's because failure is most typically experienced as something negative (i.e., the "oh man, that sucks" situation).  By letting that be the end of the story, we are depriving ourselves of a powerful catalyst for developing and growth.  Bumpy roads, effectively, can often lead to your destination - your mission.  Even with all of the potholes, missteps, setbacks, roadblocks, and well, you get the idea.

What I'd like to compel you to do is not let the moment of failure be the destination.  It also can't be the thing we see, experience briefly, and just brush it off to the side.

If we do so, we are missing out on one of the primary benefits of failure: its ability to teach us valuable lessons.  The point is that every failure - no matter how big or small - presents this unique opportunity to ... not fail.  Is taking a failure and doing something about it truly a failure?  Maybe, but also, maybe not.  I'd like to challenge our natural instinct to absorb failure as something negative.  Otherwise, we won't be able to see failure for what it can do for us (and selfishly, I like using every single drip and drop the failure can offer - I get full mileage).

And why should we care?  The reason for caring is that failure fuels resilience.  And why should we care about resilience?  Well, it makes us sturdy and able to weather nearly any storm that may arrive.

Resilience is an all-encompassing notion - that when we face adversity and challenges, we can overcome them and leave that experience with a stronger sense of self-belief.  That's our bottom line:  use failure to fuel resilience, use resilience to become sturdy and foster our confidence.

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