I remember a while back when one of my friends broke up with his girlfriend. He was really upset. At the time I had just broke up with some one as well. I told him to think about how he was feeling -right at that moment- and to embrace all the pain, because that is what it is to be human. I told him to think about how human he felt at that moment and acknowledge those negative emotions. Feeling the feelings and consciously processing them would inevitably allow him to move past them rather than if he ignored them or refused to face them.
Once we have surrendered ourself to acceptance of failure- that there is no getting (or getting back) what we want, all we are left with is feelings of pain and disappointment. This is what many self-help writers refer to as “growing pains.” During our biggest disappointments and our most painful moments we are provided with unlimited potential for the growth and strengthening of our spirit. On the other hand, some people view failure and pain as the only lens through which we would be able to appreciate the good things in our life; that we wouldn’t appreciate the good if we didn’t have the bad.
I look at it this way. Do you remember doing mazes in a coloring book as a child? I remember I would confidently, with my crayon in hand, trapse the path with the surety I would easily find my way to the maze’s exit on the first try. And almost every time I went the wrong way and hit a wall. Then I would have to retrace my steps and start over at the place where things first started to go wrong; but still, the evidence of my error was still on the paper in bright orange crayon. Even when I finally reached the end of the maze, I hated the way my finished maze looked with all those errors.
Our failures are like the maze’s roadblocks. They serve a purpose: to block us from going even further down our path in the wrong direction. Sometimes when we hit these roadblocks we get discouraged. This is often when people give up and settle for where they are and what they already have- no gain no loss. This is the worst thing a person can do. If only they kept going they may have reached the end of the maze; the place they truly wanted to be.
Failures are the largest part of the process of success (yes success if a process, a long one). Failures often teach us valuable lessons of what not to do. Learning what not to do is a valuable lesson and helps us perform better in situations when we finally do succeed. So embrace your failures, feel your feelings, and brush your shoulders off.