You can’t let your failures define you… you have to let your failures teach you,” said Barack Obama.
Now let us pause at that word define, because it is not an innocent word. It is a branding exercise. It is you picking up a branding iron, dipping it in a red hot fire, and pressing the word ‘failure’ on yourself and pretending it was printed at birth.
We do it all the time.
One failure and we declare ourselves finished. “I am not good at this,” we say, with the confidence of a man who has conducted a full scientific study on himself in under five minutes.
It is quite impressive.
Imagine if companies behaved like this. A restaurant opens, nobody walks in on day one, and the owner stands outside with a sign saying, “Closed forever. We have concluded we are terrible.”
Because that is exactly what we do in our own lives.
We take a single event and turn it into an identity.
But here is where the trouble begins. Failure is not an identity. It is an incident. Something that happened. Not something you are.
There is a world of difference between the two, and confusing them is like mistaking a pothole for the entire road.
Obama, continues by saying, ‘you have to let your failures teach you’
Now teaching is a very different matter.
Teaching sits you down and quietly asks, “What went wrong?” And worse, it waits for an honest answer.
Was it poor preparation? Was it overconfidence? Was it fear disguised as caution? Or was it simply the wrong approach at the wrong time?
Failure as a teacher is not polite. It does not hand out certificates or comforting remarks. It expects you to examine yourself with a level of honesty we usually reserve for other people.
But if you do that, something remarkable happens.
Failure begins to lose its sting.
A failed business becomes a lesson in planning.
The rejected article becomes a lesson in understanding your reader.
The book that did not quite work becomes the blueprint for a far better one, sharper, clearer, and far more alive.
Failure stops being the end, and becomes the beginning.
And perhaps that is what Obama was really getting at.
You cannot stop failure from visiting you. It has no respect for schedules or reputation. But you can decide what it does once it arrives.
You can let it define you, brand you, and quietly push you into a corner where you sit and agree with it.
Or you can let it teach you, refine you, and send you back into the world a little wiser, a little tougher, and far less likely to burn the toast again.
And between those two choices lies the stench of failure, or the refreshing aroma of success..!
The Author conducts an online, eight session Writers and Speakers Course. If you’d like to join, do send a thumbs-up to WhatsApp number 9892572883 or send a message to bobsbanter@gmail.com
