Why Failing More is My #1 Resolution Every Year

“Failure is life’s toughest teacher.”

This is one of those sayings that’s easy to throw around when somebody fucks up. It’s so ambiguous that it can be regurgitated over almost any situation where somebody hasn’t succeeded.

But success is defined by the tangible and intangible values of an individual; making it very difficult for anyone else to determine another person’s success outside of: “they have a lot of money,” “they have a nice car,” “they have a great career,” “they have a happy family,” etc.

“I am constantly failing.”

Failure is a fundamental part of the learning process.

The varying degrees of my failure can be seen in the businesses I could no longer afford to attend to, the grammatical errors in my writing, my time spent in bed when I could have been working, and the correlation between my expectations and the outcome of my recent trip to London among countless other examples.

My point is that without these failures, I wouldn’t be regularly contributing to this blog, I wouldn’t have exceeded my goal to save £10,000 by the end of 2017 and I wouldn’t know that traveling alone perhaps isn’t right for me for the time being.

This has all been made possible for me— by me, by failing first.

That, in and of itself, is a success.

In understanding that every endeavor I pursue can lead to failure, I’m embracing it.

By celebrating when something goes wrong, I’m acknowledging where it went right and will set the foundations for my next project; stronger and more stable than the last.

By doing more, I am getting more and it’s this that is the difference between seeking out failure and wallowing in it.

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Originally appeared on my website.