You must Fail…To Succeed!

Yes, you have heard it Right….You must fail…to Succeed……Failure is an asset.

Failure is nothing but an opportunity. An opportunity to realize yourself, your strengths…to Challenge yourself….to show the World that you’re not your failure…

If you study history, you will  find that all stories of success are also stories of great failures. But  people don’t see the failures. They only see one side of the picture  and they say that person got lucky: “He must have been at the right  place at the right time.”

Let me share someone’s life  history with you. This was a man who failed in business at the age of 21  ; was defeated in a legislative race at age 22; failed again in  business at age 24; overcame the death of his sweetheart at age 26; had a  nervous breakdown at age 27; lost a congressional race at age 34; lost a  senatorial race at age 45; failed in an effort to become vice-president  at age 47; lost a senatorial race at age 49; and was elected president  of the United States at age 52.

This man was Abraham Lincoln.
Would you call him a failure? He could have quit. But to Lincoln, defeat was a detour and not a dead end.

Let me share some more failure to success stories from around the world –

Thomas Edison’s teachers told him he was “too stupid to learn anything.”- Edison also famously invented 1,000 light bulbs before creating one that worked. 

Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade. He was defeated in every public office role he ran for. – Then he became the British prime minister at the age of 62. 

Harland David Sanders, the famous KFC “Colonel,” couldn’t sell his chicken. More than 1,000 restaurants rejected him.- But then one did, and today there are KFC restaurants bearing his image all over the world.

R.H. Macy had a history failing businesses, including a dud Macy’s in NYC.- But Macy kept up the hard work and ended up with the biggest department store in the world. 

Steven Spielberg was rejected from his dream school, the University of Southern California; three times.-Hes sought out an education somewhere else and dropped out to be a director.

Charlie Chaplin’s act was rejected by executives because they thought it was too obscure for people to understand.-But then they took a chance on Chaplin, who went on to become America’s first bona fide movie star.

Marilyn Monroe’s first contract with Columbia Pictures expired because they told her she wasn’t pretty or talented enough to be an actress. – Monroe kept plugging away and is one of the most iconic actresses and sex symbols of all time.

Soichiro Honda was passed over for an engineering job at Toyota and left unemployed. – But then he began making motorcycles, started a business and became a billionaire. 

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”- Several more of his businesses failed before the premiere of his movie Snow White. Today, most childhoods wouldn’t be the same without his ideas.

Albert Einstein didn’t speak until age four and didn’t read until age seven. His teachers labeled him “slow” and “mentally handicapped.” – But Einstein just had a different way of thinking. He later won the Nobel prize in physics.

Charles Darwin was considered an average student. He gave up on a career in medicine and was going to school to become a parson. – But as Darwin studied nature, he found his calling.

Sir Isaac Newton was tasked with running the family farm but was a miserable failure.-Newton was sent off to Cambridge University and became a physics scholar. 

Oprah Winfrey was fired from her television reporting job because they told her she wasn’t fit to be on screen. – But Winfrey rebounded and became the undisputed queen of television talk shows. She’s also a billionaire.

J.K. Rowling was unemployed, divorced and raising a daughter on social security while writing the first Harry Potter novel- J.K. Rowling is now internationally renowned for her 7 book Harry Potter series and is the first person to become a billionaire from writing.

Don’t be afraid to fail, Don’t waste your energy to cover up your failure..Learn from your failure and go on to the next challenge. It’s OK to Fail…If you’re not failing…you’re not growing!

Celebrate your failure and move on…..

Kanchan Chadha