I missed my first two-minute talk Tuesday, but I’ll make an exception because this week has been hectic for me. Today will be two-minute talk Wednesday!
The topic will be about dealing with failure/changing your mindset about the concept of failure.
Failure is known as a lack of success, but I think that depends on one’s mindset. If you have the mindset of “everything happens for a reason,” then do you ever really lack success?
If you have the mindset that every challenge you encounter is a learning process, then is failing all that bad? Isn’t it just another driving force to future success? Having the mindset of a champion erases failure from one’s vocabulary. Failure becomes a misstep, a hiccup in the long run.
Think…
Imagine you don’t get hired for the job you applied for. Was it really a loss, or a redirection?
Let’s say you lose a sports game. You can look at it in different ways: 1. You could’ve done better, and you should be upset about your bad performance. 2. You could’ve improved one or more specific things, you decide to work on these things, and in the future, you have something to compare your success to.
At the end of the day, if we never lose and never fail, our success lacks meaning. Our success lacks depth when all we do is succeed, and I consider myself to be a prime example of this.
In my case, failure in school was never an option. Not because of anyone else’s expectations, but because of my own. Therefore, an A in a class wasn’t necessarily a reason to celebrate as it was expected. However, when I got my first B in a math class this year, I felt awful.
Despite my “always win” mentality, this sullen feeling soon faded away. It soon turned into pride. I was proud of the B I earned in my Precalculus class, knowing how much I struggled with the material. And this pushed me beyond all limits to get an A in the second quarter of the school year. Almost every morning I woke up and told myself “I will get an A in AP Precalc this quarter.” Matter of fact, I made it more specific than that. “I will get a 98% in Precalc this quarter. No loss, all gain.” And I didn’t care about the B from first quarter anymore, because what happened was now a thing of the past.
Grand reveal: I got a 92% that quarter. It wasn’t a 98, but I got what I fought for, an A.
And do I sound a bit psycho, concerning myself over a letter grade? Maybe. But it wasn’t just about the grade. It was about bouncing back from a failure, and not settling for less in the future because of past mistakes.
The moral of the story is that failure allows you to fight for future success. It gives your success meaning, it teaches you a lesson, and it’s sometimes necessary when things aren’t meant to be.
-Nicole 🤍
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