A quick look shows that there are more than one million books on success available on Amazon but almost none on failure.
Nobody teaches you about failure in school. Only the world and life teach us about failure. We are all taught how to succeed so when we fail, it is monumental since we hardly prepare for such eventualities in life. We should. Every coin has two sides. Failure is inevitable. It comes either way.
Let me walk you down memory lane. Even if you remember as far back as 2005, you probably never heard of the video dating site created by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim.
After their first week up and running, not one single video had been uploaded. When even a $20 incentive offer failed to attract users, the creators opened the platform beyond dating and allowed users to upload any video they wanted.
The site quickly gained popularity. You’ve heard of it now. It is called YouTube, which Google acquired the following year for $1.65 billion.
The founders discarded what wasn’t working, reconfigured what was left, and tried again. YouTube was born out of failure. The world is full of such stories — from grass to grace.
Here is the mindset shift: conceptualise failure as a filter or sieve that removes unhelpful bits so that what remains can be reconstituted in a new form. The project failed to come together as expected. Good! Now let’s take what we have and see how we can organise it in a different way. The results might prove extraordinary.
Winston Churchill doubtless had this in mind when he defined success as going from one failure to the next with no loss of enthusiasm. You can’t succeed if you didn’t encounter failure.
Patience
Good work does not blossom into existence instantaneously. It often takes five, 10, or 20 years to become an “overnight” success.
Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Vera Wang, and James Dyson are among the super-successful creators who overcame failure on their way to achieving business stardom. But they didn’t restart from scratch. They built new layers on the bedrock of their previous efforts until the world took notice of their achievements.
King Solomon says, “Do you see the one who is diligent in his work? He shall stand before kings, and need not present himself before those who stand in the shadow.”
Mr Gikunda teaches English and Literature in Gatundu North Sub County.
