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What is not failure?
Failure Not succeeding. True and permanent failure is rare. We mostly experience setbacks by not succeeding on a first, second, or even third try. It often takes more than one attempt to succeed at something. Think about the first time you tried to swim the full length of the pool or ride a bike. When you didn’t succeed on the first try, did you say “Wow, what a failure! I’ll never try that again!”? Of course not! Success is incremental. For most things in life, including learning, it takes sustained effort and sometimes several setbacks before success is achieved. Don’t (mis) characterize as failure what is actually a setback.
Whaaaa! I’ll never try that again!
Failure is not rejection. Ouch! Sometimes failure hurts. People often equate failure with rejection, or as judgement of their value as a person. When you get a poor grade on a paper, project or test, or experience any other set back in school, it is not rejection of you or a measurement of your value as a person. It’s an indication that somewhere in the process of acquiring, retaining or demonstrating knowledge, you made one or more errors which caused you to fall short of your goal. Failure is not you. Failure does not define you. In fact, out of failure often emerges a stronger, smarter, and more resilient student. The only failure that defines you is the failure that results from not caring about learning, not making an effort to learn, and not trying again (and again and again) to succeed at learning. PRODUCT PREVIEW Failure is not the end of the world. Some things in life (or school) come with a do-over, some don’t. When you encounter the latter, accept responsibility and the consequence of the failure and move on. Try to to pull something positive from the situation, such as gaining valuable insight enabling you to avoid that particular problem in the future. Look forward to the many more opportunities to learn and succeed that will come your way. It gets better. Will you fail?
Yes. You are going to fail. At some point in your life as a student you will suffer a set back that you consider a failure. It might be a terrible grade on a paper or project, it could be failing a test, even a class. It could be in high school, college, or graduate school. It could happen more than once. It could be a big failure. It could be a small failure. No one wants to fail, but when you do fail, how you handle it is important. Believe it or not, there are some potential benefits to it.
Chapter 28 | The Benefits of Failure 266
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