I was meeting with a client yesterday. We got talking about failure and its role in life. She hasn’t been in a very “failure friendly” environment and it shows. She’s been beat up and is overly hard on herself and her “failures.” As we were talking about the value, yes the value of failure, out of my mouth popped:

Ya know, I think failure is the antidote to failure.

We both paused and realized how important that statement was (for both of us). Failure is a part of life. But it can be more than a painful interruption in an otherwise happy life. It can actually be the way to greater wisdom, success, effectiveness and yes, happiness.

You might be thinking, “So should I encourage failure for the sake of effectiveness?”

Not necessary.

Failure happens.

The point is what we do once we’ve failed. How we handle failure can crush us and others, or it can become the antidote for well, failure.

It just depends on my/our view.