Welcome to the real world. You are going to fail. Now I know that isn’t a very encouraging thing to hear, but, if you hear me out, I will tell you why failing is one the best things that happened to me.
As a college student, the word “fail” is one of the scariest words I know. Automatically, I think of failing assignments and classes as my GPA plummets beyond repair. This word causes stress and sleeplessness as students stay awake far beyond productive hours to try and remember every detail that they can from a book many of them hadn’t even read yet. Don’t feel attacked. I was always counted among those students too. In my few years of dealing with this fear, however, I learned to place it. I was never afraid of failure itself, only of the failure to pass a class. I daresay that’s a rational fear to have. In this jumble of trying to get through college and into life, I often misunderstood failure. I’ll go back a while to explain why, since my own story is the most honest example I can share.
When I was in high school, I was that “Straight As” kid. I took all the advanced classes and college-level work. In my mind, I had everything completely figured out about my future. My problem was that I never failed at something. Now, I’m not suggesting failing classes or out of school by any means, but I didn’t know what even small failures felt like. In many ways, I was sheltered and unprepared for the world outside my happy, academically sound bubble. I can almost see people rolling their eyes at me, so I’ll skip ahead to my point. In college, I fell flat on my face. Failure felt like it was suddenly my defining feature. I failed classes, I failed friends, and I failed myself and my future. I got there expecting to breeze through because I was “so smart” and everyone told me so. Let me share something right now; grades do not determine how intelligent you are. People do not determine how intelligent you are. You do. I thought I was the smartest kid, because of the letter “A”. When I look back on that now, it honestly makes me laugh. What does any of this have to do with me telling people they’re going to fail? I’ll go ahead and connect those dots.
When I failed and reached what I naively imagined to be my lowest point, I was forced to make a choice. I could either let my failure cripple me and give into the belief that I must just be stupid or not meant to succeed...or I could get up. I could pull myself back out of the hole that I’d dug with my arrogance and laziness and change the way I did things. I could learn from my failure. I failed because I was afraid to ask for help. Now, I realize that there are people around me that want to help. People who care about you want to see you succeed. Ask for help. Everyone needs it sometimes. I failed because I was lazy and had no real drive. Listen, you can’t stay moving if you don’t get moving! Start with little goals. Today, I’m going to read for a while. Today, I’m going to write for a while. Today, I’m going to spend some quiet time in prayer and devotion to really start out in a good place mentally. It’s small things that later build and become greater goals. I have to push myself, not because I’m super energetic and driven but because I’m not. Lastly, I failed because I didn’t believe in myself. I thought that since I failed, I must be a failure. This is very important: no one is a failure. God didn’t fail when he made you or me. We are not made up of failures, but we can allow ourselves the grace and patience to be sharpened by them. I’ll elaborate on this last part in greater detail.
I made the choice to stand back up when I failed. It took me a long time to recover my grades and it didn’t happen in some inspirational film montage. It took work, time, and tears. I still may never be back up to where I used to be in my high school grades, but it’s okay. My record is permanently marked with those failures, but that’s okay too. The part that I care about is that when I pushed myself back up, I learned that I could. I knew for the first time in my life that I could come back from failure knowing more than I did if I would have never failed. I wound up failing even more since then in different ways, but now that I knew I would be alright, I took it in stride. I let every small failure teach me something about how I’m going to succeed in the future and what ways do not lead to that success. Part of real life is failing. As imperfect people, there is always going to be some area where we fall down, like learning to walk all over again. Is it frustrating? Um, yes! Do you get discouraged when this happens? Absolutely. It’s only when we’re at the bottom that we get to see what we’re really made of. I wound up changing my major and my whole life plan twice. In fact, it might even change again. But every time it changes and I have to pick myself back up from the last one that didn’t work out, I’m closer to being who I’m meant to be. I am no who I thought I was going to be and I don’t know when I’m going to fail next, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Next time I fall, I’ll be ready.
To sum up all of what I just told you, failure happens to everyone. Sometimes it’ll be small and you’ll be able to just brush it off, but frequently it really hurts. That’s just the world we live in. Failing doesn’t make you a failure. You need to learn from the fall. From what I’ve seen in my years of hard work and study, being successful is all about learning how to fall gracefully and recover stronger than before. When you fail, fail forward. Don’t fall back into the same cycle; instead, let it push you into who you can be.
Congratulations. You’re going to fail. You now have the choice to decide what kind of person this failure is going to make you. Are you going to let it keep you down or are you going to prove it wrong? You’re tough stuff! You are fearfully and wonderfully made and capable of more than you could ever know! So let’s fail...then let’s get to work.
