Failure is a Key to Success

Perhaps failure isn’t the most talked-about ingredient for success; that prize might go to hard work or education. But I think failure is indeed one of the ingredients.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially in terms of social media. Whether it’s on Facebook or Instagram or somewhere else, we see people (mostly) at their best, posting pictures and stories that show the successes of their day or their week. But the truth is that no one experiences success without first feeling the sting of failure. We fall before we learn to walk. We fall off the bike before we can ride down the street.  We play or sing many less-than-beautiful notes before we develop our signature sound.

We think of brilliant composers like Beethoven and Brahms and marvel at their ingenious works. But for every masterpiece they wrote, they probably wrote 10 pieces that are hardly ever performed. Not everything they wrote was a success. Likewise, with performers, we can be sure that even Leonard Bernstein, Clara Schumann, and Duke Ellington had their bad days and their failures.

Everyone fails. It’s those who persevere and keep going that eventually succeed. Then perhaps you will fail again, but with persistence you will likely find success again. Failure is not a reason to stop – it’s a reason to keep going.