Ask any normal business person what they think about of failure in their profession of choice, and they’ll almost certainly look at you as if you’re some kind of fool who’s just fallen out of the sky.
Yes, when all is said and done, it’s a natural part of the human experience to pursue success and avoid failure. When failure does rear its ugly head, it represents chaos, uncertainty, the dangers of the future, and makes us reflect negatively on our own shortcomings and decisions. Maybe we should have taken out that traders policy after all? Maybe we just don’t have what it takes to make it in business, or in life?
But for all the horror and confusion and pain that failure represents, it can also have some very real benefits, especially in business. Because chaos and uncertainty present threat, but they also present opportunity and a chance for approaching things with new eyes.
Here’s a look at some ways in which failure may benefit you in your professional life.
It Makes You A More Complete Professional
Imagine two people, in the same profession, aiming for a certain outcome. The first of these people lines his ducks up in the right order, makes the right choices, and is graced by luck in exactly the right proportions that he is met by success after success early on.
As he’s never encountered failure, this person will develop theories about his own success. He’ll tell himself that he has good instincts, is naturally gifted, understands the industry, and so on. But the day will come — as it inevitably does for all of us — when he experiences failure in some area of his professional life, and is unable to account for it using his model of reality. Not only that, but he has no idea how to meet failure, bounce back from it, or incorporate it’s lessons.
Imagine now that the second of these people has failed many times on his road to success. He knows not only what works, but what doesn’t. He sees pitfalls in advance, and he knows how to respond to them.
It Helps To Develop Your Grit & Resilience
There’s an idea, which enthusiastically proclaimed by the ancient Stoic philosophers, that failure and hardship are to be viewed as training sessions which develop our character and fortitude.
This idea has a lot of truth to it.
The more often you’re able to face your hardships and push on through, without giving in and allowing despair to get a hold of you, the more resilient you become when facing future challenges.
When failure arises, use it as a weight to train with.
It Signals Areas For Further Development & Refinement
Each failure you experience provided a certain map of things that won’t work, just as each success gives you an idea of things that will, or might, work.
As the quote attributed to Thomas Edison goes; “I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Use your failures to construct a map of approaches to avoid, and areas of your business that require further development and refinement.
I hope you enjoyed this article about the benefits of failure in business in the long run after lessons are learned.
Interested in more articles about running a successful business?
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