Failure

I recently finished Lincoln’s Melancholy a book written by Joshua Wolf Shenk. This book is a very interesting read the part that I found interesting was when the concept of failure was talked about. Back in Abraham Lincoln’s day the term failure was generally used by business people to describe an event. Today the term failure, more often than not, is used to describe a person and rarely an event in that persons life.
Sir Ken Robins talks about how we have created a system in which failure is the worst thing that could ever happen. Many of the “successful” people I have ever read/listened to talk about the importance that failure has played in their own lives. They were willing and able to pick themselves up and not label themselves failures even though they had experienced failure.I have noticed that many of my great successes have come after a period of failure.
A few years ago I had gotten a new job I was really excited about this job because it was a lot better than the phone place I had been working at. Well I made it about a week in my new job. When they decided that I didn’t have the proper skills to be effective in the job. It really crushed me for a long time. I went and got another job at a call center. But if I had done well at that job I would of most likely stuck with it and missed a golden opportunity that came my way shortly after it. In short it would of dramatically changed my life for the worse if I had actually stayed at that job. I was able to take a job up on campus that lead me to a wonderful opportunity to be student director for the Recreation Sports program. I learned more from that experience than I would of ever learned at the other job.This doesn’t change the fact that experiencing failure is any easier it just helps to know that failure is an experience that will pass and most likely replaced with a greater experience we would of never had if we had not failed.