Failure! Just Fear or Steps to Success?

Failure is everybody’s biggest fear. That is no secret! Many of us have probably experienced this at one time or another. Because we exist in a world where our performances are constantly judged, especially in school, failure is often seen as a bad experience. But what if we could get children to see failure as actually a good thing? Would it help them?

Failure is a new beginning…

“Failure is success in progress,” Albert Einstein once said. Failure is unavoidable especially when trying out new things, so it would help our children to know how to accept failure and what to learn from each failure.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again. Therefore, it is just a new chance to be successful. If we can communicate this message to our children, it will be a lesson that will help them throughout their lives. One way to inspire kids might be by sharing real life stories of people whose failures led to their eventual success.

Real Stories: From Failure to Success.

Here are some interesting real-life stories of people who refused to give up, embraced with their failures, and later turned them into a ladder leading to success.

Steve Jobs was initially fired from Apple.

Steve Jobs is a well known American entrepreneur because of his unique innovations and strong leadership, but that is not his full story. Jobs  failed many times in his career…

• One of his innovations, the Apple III computer had uncountable hardware issues. Many engineers doubted it could work.
• But he kept trying new designs until he got to the beautiful iMacs and iPhones.
• He was only 30 years old when Apple’s board of directors fired him.
• He, then, learned from his leadership failure and took the Apple Brand to new heights when he was rehired as CEO many years later.

Albert Einstein’s teacher said he’d never succeed in life.

There are very few people in the world that don’t know or respect Einstein. In fact, his name has become a synonym for genius. We might think a person like that must have always been successful, but we would be wrong. He had had a lot failures in his life.

Einstein didn’t speak until he was nine years old, and his teacher said he would not amount to anything in his life.

• He was expelled from school for his rebellious nature.
• He worked in the post office as a basic clerk to make money so that he could keep doing physics on the side.
• But all of these failures led him to a big success when he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.
• A boy who was expelled from his school went on to became a world famous scientist.

It is not just famous people in far away places that have learned from their failure to find success. Two amazing Nepalis have also taken this path.

Pushpa Basnet

Basnet’s journey is a motivation for thousands of people around the globe to make a difference in society and change lives. Awarded with CNN Hero Award 2012 and CNN Super Hero 2016, Puspha Basnet’s story shows how embracing failure leads to success.

• Basnet failed in Math during her 10th-grade board exams.
• Since Pushpa had to wait for a year to reappear for her exam, she volunteered at an orphanage and developed an interest in social work.
• Now, she runs non-profit organizations ECDC (Early Child Development Center) and Butterfly Homes.
• Basnet is devoted to strengthening the rights of children living in prison, providing them with food, shelter, and education through her initiative.

Nischal Basnet

“I had started to believe that I was not destined to achieve anything. No matter how many varieties of sectors I tried my hands on, all I could achieve was incompletion. I was totally frustrated,” Nischal once shared in an interview. The man we are talking about right now is a famous Nepali director, actor, and playback singer.

• He returned back  home to Nepal from Australia in 2009 to create good Nepali movies, but he could not do that right away. He had to  start his career from scratch, working as a spot boy in the sets of other filmmakers.
•  Basnet only made his breakthrough in 2012 when he debuted as a film director with the very successful crime-thriller ‘Loot’, which earned 25.5 million NPR.

Of course, it is not just famous people that benefit from having a positive attitude towards failure. Here is a story of Laxmi Didi, a Safa Tempo driver who found success by learning from failure.

Laxmi Sharma

• Laxmi Sharma is Nepal’s first female tempo driver and the founder of Laxmi Wood Craft Udhyog.
• She got married at 13 and was a single mother of three for most of her life. Sharma started her wood craft business 35 years ago and now is popularly known as ‘The Button Lady’.
• Learning from her struggles as a mother and as a household helper, she later started her own handicraft business.
• In this journey of a woman living in a man’s world, Laxmi faced many challenges from political to natural calamities, but overcame them all to be where she is today.
• She lives by a  simple philosophy in life: Be honest, reliable and confident.

So let’s remember that if we want our children to be little Einsteins, then we should remember the worlds of the real Einstein: ‘A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.’ Let’s give our children space to make mistakes and the encouragement to keep trying again and again.