Failure as a topic is everywhere nowadays, especially in the digital era. Click on any website today and odds are you will see a quote that gives you perspective. Someone will have posted the picture of the sun rising on your Facebook feed. On LinkedIn, you will see a quote by someone hugely encouraging to go try something new, and not to box yourself into a career option just to make money. On Twitter, amid the onslaught of scary information and news, you will see a cute cat GIF or just a feel good video that makes you feel like you can do anything. But it is okay to fail– really.
Failure is common. Whenever we attempt something new, chances are we will fail several times at it before we get the desired result. Starting a new diet? A cinnamon roll or a cheese Danish will call your name on day 3. A new exercise routine? Your sore muscles will complain or the chill of the morning will keep you in bed and become the perfect excuse to give that day’s workout a miss. A new job? You have to learn new skills: people skills, work skills, negotiating skills, networking skills, communication skills – as you adjust to a new environment, and there might be a gaffe or two in that adjustment period that makes you feel like a complete and utter failure. Taking a sabbatical from work? As you watch your bank savings dwindle, you might begin to question if your grand reinvention plan was actually a failure. Persistence is often the key to overcoming failure. Remember, JK Rowling began writing Harry Potter on a napkin.
But don’t worry. Failure is nothing to be ashamed of, or scared of. The path to success is littered with failure, as you will see from the quotes of these eminent people who trod this path, encountered failure along the way, but kept on going until they reached their target of success. Here are some great quotes to get you to keep on keeping on when the feeling of failure rears its ugly head. Like Thomas Edison once quipped: “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”
- “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
- “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas A. Edison
- “Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.” – Paulo Coelho
- “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt
- “It’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.” – Ellen DeGeneres
- “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” – Henry Ford
- “It’s not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts.” – Zig Ziglar
- “Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.” – Robert T. Kiyosaki
- “If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want” – Richard Yates
- “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” – Jack Canfield
- “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” – Maya Angelou
- “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert Kennedy
- “I have failed many times, and that’s why I am a success.” – Michael Jordan
- “Failure is a bend in the road, not the end of the road. Learn from failure and keep moving forward.” – Roy T. Bennett
- “Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.” – Samuel Beckett
So the next time you feel like you’ve failed at something, and you need a fillip, bookmark this page. And come back to it as many times as you need.
