Question

Failure is an inescapable part of life and critically important part of any successful life. Describe a transformative failure you faced and how it changed you.

Answer 1

What is failure? We all experience it. But only some people know how to learn from it to be more successful in the future. It's natural to try to avoid things that could end in failure. Failure can be embarrassing and painful to experience. Failure is defined as a lack of success or the inability to meet an expectation. The problem is that we can read too much into failure. Too often, we tie it to our sense of self-worth, self-esteem, and self-acceptance. The expectation we fail to meet is often our own, or one that we've created in our own head. A fairly common understanding of failure is setting a goal but not achieving it.

In my opinion, whether we succeed or fail depends mostly on our own expectations. Let me give you my example. I failed to get to the college of my choice. I tried hard, prepared for the entrance exams and for the interviews, but I eventually didn’t make a cut. At first I find it hard to accept, because I thought that I did my best. But when I later talked to some other people, I understood that I didn’t put as much efforts as the others into my preparation. I didn’t hire an interview coach and a tutor, and I didn’t have my application reviewed by a professional writer. That’s what many others did. At the end I simply accepted the situation. Others were better, or tried harder, and so they deserved the place more than I did. It’s behind me now, I earned my degree from another field, and now I am looking forward to getting my first job.

The same holds true for personal quests, whether in overcoming some specific challenge or reaching your full potential in all aspects of life. To achieve your personal best, to reach unparalleled heights, to make the impossible possible, you can’t fear failure, you must think big, and you have to push yourself. When we think of people with this mindset, we imagine the daredevils, the pioneers, the inventors, the explorers: They embrace failure as a necessary step to unprecedented success. But you don’t have to walk a tightrope, climb Mount Everest or cure polio to employ this mindset in your own life.

“One of the biggest secrets to success is operating inside your strength zone but outside of your comfort zone,”. Although you might fail incredibly, you might succeed incredibly—and that’s why incredible risk and courage are requisite. Either way, you’ll learn more than ever about your strengths, talents and resolve, and you’ll strengthen your will for the next challenge. If this sounds like dangerous territory, it can be. But there are ways to ease into this fearless mindset.