A Persuasive Speech About Failure

From the time a child is born to the day that they die, they will be told countless times to dream big. People tell them to reach for the stars and pursue the things that make them happy. Something they do not tell them is how powerful failure can be; how it can alter a person’s perspective on life and the direction they think they need to go with their future. Ever since I was a little girl my life’s goal in the FFA was to become a State FFA Officer. The concept of being able to positively impact someone’s life and promote an industry that I believe in whole-heartedly got my blood pumping. I was not prepared for failure, I only thought about success.

I failed to reach the top of the rock climbing wall on the playground, and as a result, I have strived even harder to reach the peak of success in everything I do. Instead of becoming discouraged and disappointed in myself, I found a way to improve myself for my next challenge. Learning from my mistakes has molded me into an improved person while giving me the motivation to keep pushing forward. Failure has taught me the importance of learning from your errors and trying again, no matter how difficult it may be. Without lessons like these, I would not be the motivated, independent person that I am today. I will continue to fail and try again until I achieve my goal of reaching the

Failure can be a very difficult thing to cope with. It can be something that makes you or breaks you. I have learned that failure is what defines a person; it shows your motivation to bounce back when things get rough. I have learned from my failure instead of dwelling on it and making myself weaker.

Learning from failure is important to having a successful life. You have to figure out what works and what does not which requires some trial and error. Many famous entrepreneurs who have a successful career have experienced many failures in their lifetime. An example of

Before Thomas Edison died he said” The trouble with other inventors is that they try a few things then they quit. I never quit until I get what I want”

Sir Winston Churchill, a British politician from 1800’s says “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” Throughout my few years of living, I have learned that everybody is going to fail at something at least once. It is up to you to take all of your failures and turn them into success. It’s not going to only take one day but everyone is destined to be successful.

Failure is a difficult concept for many people to accept because it is hard to understand what failure exactly is. The idea of failure can be seen in the concluding chapters of The Great Gatsby when Gatsby fails to achieve his dream of being with Daisy. The issue of failure exists within all people whether they are successful or not. The issue of dealing with failure is a difficult hurdle to overcome for many reasons, which includes ideas

In my own life, a motto that has stuck with me is, you only fail if you do not try.

Thomas Edison -- the inventor of the light bulb -- failed 1,000 times before perfecting his design. Why should we raise a young person, a student no less, to a higher standard than America’s greatest inventor? The nation pushes people forward, telling each individual that they are not allowed to be unsuccessful. This causes a multitude of people unnecessary stress; there is no longer a “good enough,” one could always do better. However, one shouldn’t be required to always do better; according to Zinsser, we need to “take a hundred side trips . . . Faltering, drawing back, and starting again” in order to find our purpose. “Failure” isn’t a dreadful word -- it is a valuable one that holds no venom in its

For example, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, one of the most highly acclaimed colleges in the nation. Most people, at the time, would have considered him a failure. Yet, he went on to create Microsoft, one of the top multinational computer corporations in the world. This proves how sometimes being a failure can be the gateway to becoming a success.

     Despite that The Lord of the Rings has been a huge success world wide being translated into six different languages, The Fellowship of the Ring alone selling eight million copies by 1980, (St.James 560) to date spawning a motion picture trilogy, infiltrating the ideals of such cults as the 1960 Hippies and the 1990 Russian Idealist movement,(St. James 560) being hailed as a modern literary classic, it was something that almost didn't occur. British publishers were leery about taking on the project entitled The Lord of the Rings. In comparison to their American counter parts the publishing company was relatively poor and feared losing money in the investment that was an adult follow up to a children's novel, that would be sold to an adult audience, at an adult price.(Grotta 113) The production was originally to be published in a large volume, rather than its actual printing in a three separate installments which included The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Against the feuding authors wishes in 1954 HarperCollins released The Fellowship of the Ring,(Grotta 113) the second chapter in the lives of his extravagantly esteemed inhabitants of the middle-earth.

As I discussed earlier in my writtings, I think that failure cannot be avoided and we are presented with failures to gain an opportunity to learn. Failures will be an aspect at some point professionally and or personally so that we can grow and develop as

Failure often times leads a person to feel helpless, disappointed and depressed. However,one should not allow this to set them back in trying to achieve the ultimate aim one has set out to do. Failure in the beginning can often be a powerful incentive to reassess one’s position in wanting to achieve the particular aims; to analyse whether the purpose is worth the trouble the person has to undergo and the whether the obstacles are surmountable.

In conclusion, I have experienced three noteworthy failures early in my life. Most people thought that based on my failures, I would not be able to succeed in life. However, with the hard work I put into, I managed to overcome my failures and mature into a more responsible person. Based on my ability to

Harry Potter has become a household name throughout the years of its existence (Ernie 139) because of the publishing companies, Bloomsbury and Scholastic, that took the necessary risks. (Bristow 313). Contrary to popular belief, Harry Potter was not an instant success, especially since it had difficulty in finding a publisher (Visser and Kaai 196). What few people know is that several publishers actually rejected J.K. Rowling’s work before Bloomsbury first took a chance on it, and it took at least two years before the phenomenal novel reached the top sellers list in New York (Visser and Kaai 196). The Cinematic franchise of Harry Potter alone is worth at least 25 Billion Dollars (Wells and Fahey “The numbers are