Perception Of Failure In Before Happiness, By Shawn Anchor

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!"

Failure is all around us, but so is success. Both result from one thing, setting goals. I set goals to achieve a sense of accomplishment when they are completed. From doing my homework every night to getting 100 percent on a test, goals help me focus my time on the activities that I must accomplish. Taking responsibility for your own failures is difficult. My failure makes me wonder what could I have done differently. I was forced to ask myself that question after Cross Country Districts Junior year.

The article titled “How to help kids overcome fear of failure” by Vicki Zakrzewski made me think about failure in a new light. I chose this article because it is something I still need to learn myself. It is easy to think, “ I will be able to help coach my students about failure and help them see that it is okay to mess up and not be perfect”! When I have to take my own advice that is a different story. I do not take failure well. I have always put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed and hate it when I feel like I can’t do something well.

In most people's minds, the notion of failure is never a pleasant thought. However, think again, for certain benefits reside within the crushing blow of defeat. If one experiences failure and finds a way to get back up, they will emerge stronger than before.

Let's consider some positive ways to approach failure, have a different perspective on setbacks and so begin to thrive:

Failure, at its core, is a road that leads to success; that leads to achievement. Personally, I never looked at it with that perspective until my second year of high school, where I received my first ever term grade of a C. To me, a C was no better than an F, an absolute failure in every sense of the word. It felt like the end of the world. Even so, within this whirlwind of self-hatred, I learned something that helped me improve little by little: how to make the best of a bad situation.

Many times when people think about failure all they can think about is the loss and hardships they have experienced rather than the good that can come out of loss. Everyone in there life is experiences failure at some point and without failure it would be impossible to relish the joy of success. In eighth grade I experienced a heartbreaking loss that helped shape me into the man that I am today.

Most people associate failure with something negative, while I associate it with positive thoughts. If I wouldn’t have failed at the Youth World Barrel Racing Championships I would have never learned how to stay humble, positive, and how not to let failure bring you down.

Scott Adams had a lot of failures, yet he ended up creating Dilbert, one of the most famous comic strips ever. He says that he embraces failure and then 'picks its pocket'. If you want to learn about how to deal with failure, then his book on failure is obviously something you want to check out.

With failure comes hard work. If one work hard enough and gives things up, their future will have a

As the world and society put a certain image that goes along with failure people have become fearful and staggered to take risks and develop new and different ideas that aren’t always the typically in the box demean way of life. As we encounter our own journeys in life there is no wrong path that we take, everyone has their own way of going through things from the failures that set us back in life open new and different doors that could have better opportunities. Failure is not the end it is only the beginning to a new way of life, sometimes we drown in seas of relief from the knowledge that we failed our selves Failure teaches us as individuals to become more passionate and understanding towards others then encounter simpler fiats.

Failure is something that we cannot go through life without experiencing. The best thing about failure is that failure can be used as a great learning experience to improve upon things in our lives and career. Using failure as a learning tool is dependent upon the person and how they view it as well as how they use it. Failure is a matter of perspective and the lessons in failure are important aspects towards growth and development. If we did not experience failure there wouldn’t be opportunities for learning. Failure can teach us about ourselves as well as provide an understanding for our

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.

Being optimistic is the main principle for most people. We may often hear the statement about “be an optimist, not a pessimist!” shouted by people. Sometimes you do it for yourself too. When facing such a failure or problem, this will not only help to relieve your heart. Being optimistic will help someone to be healthy in physical and mental. An optimist will find the best way in any circumstance and hope for every good thing can come to him/her. You may have gone through thousands of hard times. However, if you are a born optimist then you will not care of anything destructing you.