What Is Failure?

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In the mindset book they talk about failure and how it can either motivate or define you.  They go on to explain that the basic principle is saying “I failed” instead of “I’m a failure”.  Failure is painful whether you have a growth or fixed mindset, but how you recover from it is the important thing.  In our society failure is looked at as a bad shameful thing when in reality it’s just another experience to learn.  For example after reading the first chapter of this book the first person I thought of in my life with a growth mindset was my younger brother.  The surest way to motivate him to master something is to tell him he can’t do it, and he doesn’t do it out of anger to prove anyone wrong he does it to prove to himself he can do it.  I admire this about him.  My ideas about failure is that for some people it can be a great motivator but for others it just gives them an excuse to fail again, once again playing into the growth or fixed mindset.  However in some cases people may fail and for a time period after that they continue to fail, but at certain point the take a look at their lives and make a conscious decision to do better.  Failure is a choice.  You either choose to fail or choose to succeed.  There are measures you can take to prevent failure and other measures you can take to recover from it.  It’s true that people who fail usually continue the cycle but I don’t see that as an excuse. In sum failure means something different to everyone but to me it’s something preventable and recoverable.