How Failure Has Changed Over The Centries

“ It is okay to be a glowstick, sometimes we need to break before we shine” ( 12 quotes That will Immediately Boost your confidence). Sometimes, to grow, people have to shrink first. So then they have a new start, to grow bigger then they ever were. In order to have success, sometimes failure comes first, this happens in today’s life, and the Odyssey.

When I look at the word failure I didn’t see success. But that slowly changed as I read the book What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain Chapter four. Bain, for me and I’m sure many other, have changed our view point on failure being a bad thing. He instead expressed failure as an “opportunity to learn something.” (121) As infants we grow and develop, we learn to walk by falling down a couple hundred times, and we learn to speak by babbling. By trying to walk, and trying to talk, we may fail at first. As an infant, you cannot give up when you are face to face with failure. You must get up and try again to learn. In the book, What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain he uses people’s experiences and research to explain why failure is an opportunity to learn something new, rather than seeing failure as something bad. He asserts “people who become highly creative and productive learn to acknowledge failures, even to embrace them, and to explore and learn from them.” (100) Failure is important. If we did not get up and try again as infants, we would not be where we are today.

Failure is something that all people encounter in their lives. In some situations failure can break a person or make a person, meaning a person can fail at something and just simply give up. Others will fail and that failure can give them the inspiration to try harder to one day achieve their goal. I'm the type of person to fail and work harder until I am content. As my championship baseball coach would say "What’s our motto? Never give up!"

The short story, The Right to Fail by William Zinsser, explains how it is acceptable to fail and learn from one's mistakes and to not go down the path society has made socially acceptable. Zinner has a positive outlook on the concept of failing, he explains, “Success can be dangerous- you feel you know it all. I’ve learned a  great deal from my failures.” As life goes on, everyone may not succeed the same way or even succeed at everything they attempt to do, but it is important to learn from mistakes and continue moving forward and to find the path that works for you. Trying new things and failing or succeeding can open new doors to something better.

How does an individual’s perspective of, and response to, a crisis define him or her?

Failure is a part of everyone's daily lives; however, depending on the person you are you

It is common while growing up to be told “everybody makes mistakes” or “ learn from your mistakes.” However, when the word failure is replaced with mistake the inspirational quote is suddenly negative and not taken lightly. Society has viewed failure as unacceptable when in reality it is inevitable. Both essays, “In Praise of the F Word” by Mary Sherry and “The Right to Fail” by William Zinsser advocate for the change of how failure is viewed in society through an abundance of anecdotes, allusions, and some humor. However, Sherry hopes that overall the frequency of failure will stop, while Zinsser promotes failure as a positive learning tool.

Failure can feel devastating when you are living through the experience. I felt this way during one of the greatest failures in my life, failing to qualify for State History Day in my junior year of high school. This was my third History Day competition and I had previously qualified for State. While I entered the event with confidence from previous competitions and a final product that I thought was close to perfect, experiencing failure this time taught me how to strive for the best that I can be, persevere through tough times, and that sometimes your best isn't always the best.

Until recently, my definition of failure was determined by not getting something that you desired. However, after watching an interview with Emma Fierburg, the CEO of Spanx, my perspective on the subject has changed. In the video of Fierburg, Emma talks about how her dad would ask her and her brother about what they had failed at that day and would be disappointed when they would say “nothing.” In doing this Emma says that her definition of failure had been reframed. Failure to her went from “the outcome” to “not trying.”

The word “failure”, by definition, is the condition of not achieving the desired end or ends. However, this standard definition does not come close to summing up the countless other meanings of failure. Every person, regardless of status, color, or sex, has had to deal with this issue at least once in their lifetime. Even so, each person’s definition of it can vary depending on their personal experiences. The interpretations of failure may differ, but failure itself involves not putting forth effort, being a disappointment, or not succeeding in a task.

"Few of our own failures are fatal," economist and Financial Times columnist Tim Harford writes in his new book, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure.

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 is a word no one desires to hear ever in their life, but yet the majority of us go through many moments in our life where we feel like we've failed. Enright says in the article "Falling Short: Seven Writers Reflect on Failure" that she has no problem with failure it's success that makes her sad; failing is easy. Would Enright still say failing is easy if she was living in the ancient roman times; I doubt it. In ancient roman times failure was frowned upon is was recognized to be very shameful. If one was considered a failure they would take their own life. They would rather kill them selves and die as a failure then to try to become something great.

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.

As my first semester of college is coming to an end, I would like to reflect on my experience here within the Honors 120 and 121 class on Failure and the Question Wheel. I chose this class on failure because I have always held myself to such high standards that I hoped to be able to find a way to accept failure in some instances. Within our first week in class, we made claims about failure. My favorite claim was that every failure is in some way a success. Although this claim was not very debatable and incredibly generic, I was able to really let my mind explore what it was trying to say. Throughout the semester I experienced failure after failure, but that allowed me to see that success can still be achieved within failures.