The Incredible benefits of Failure and Change

Maybe this is a very contradicting title-"The benefits of Failure"? How could failure be a benefit but of course when we start to think about it we then begin to develop a realisation about it and we can see that in fact this is a way of learning for us.

The problem is of course that failure is a little like change-we do not like to "fail" and we do not like "change" and, regretably we see both of these activities in a negative way. To most people we see "failure" as being the opposite of success and of course we all want to be succesful. If we are not a success then clearly we are a failure and it seems that our whole society is built around this concept of success in all that we do or say or think. We are conditioned from a very early age to strive for success and this success is usually in the eyes or the expectations of someone else. Eventually we buy into it because of media and advertising and demands and attitudes of society - but this does not mean that success is all that it aspires in our minds to be.

Therefore let us look at "Failure" from a different perspective. "Failure" is a mental state so let us look at it differently. Because of our background we are conditioned to accept that we need to avoid failure and that we should strive for an expectation of success in our activities but when we look at the World and all its issues mostly we can see only overwhelming failures. Failures on behalf of Governments, Leaders, Politicians, Companies, Infrastructures etc-almost everywhere we look we can find a multitude of "things" that we can describe as being a "failure".

Essentially I believe that we have the wrong attitude and it is this attitude that then psychologically detrimentally affects us in the Workplace when we are confronted by the concept of change.

When we "fail" we have not achieved an expectation and so we feel disappointed and in consequence we then become fearful of trying something new. The more we experience "failure" then the more we can become fearful until we reach a mental state of being in "Procrastination" and when this happens we stagnate and the "failure" becomes worse. When we are then confronted with the concept of "change" our mind moves very fast to the idea of "potential failure" and so we fall into a self imposed psychological trap. In other articles I have written about the "Assassin Within" and it is clear that the "Assassin Within" thrives on the idea of "failure" and its connection to "change".

Essentially if we stay within our self imposed boundaries we can potentially avoid "failure" and thus we can hide from "Change".

But, if we allow ourselves to be this way then we overlook many things which can be of great benefit to us and some of these things are:

• By stretching ourselves into unchartered territory we learn more about ourselves and of course we learn something new about that subject
• Every new experience that we have has an impact on us and gives us the opportunity to see things from a different perspective
• By giving ourselves the opportunity to do something new then we can learn about the potential failure but we can still plan for success but if this is not achieved then we have learned much for our future efforts
• We are building up a sense of our own resilience which is one of the great attributes of a Leader-resilience comes from the knowledge and experience of failure and with this sense of endurance we can develop a greater sense of ourselves
• We learn about the detrimental impact of not extending ourselves beyond the self imposed boundaries because when we can go beyond them we can then truly judge the impact of procrastination
• The combination of failure, determination and resilience will give us both the skills, the virtues and the experience to become great leaders of ourselves and of others. 

By undertaking projects or activities that will stretch us beyond the normal then we give ourselves the chance for greater self understanding and when this is combined with the characteristics of determination and resilience we are then developing the survival skills of true Leadership.

By accepting the inevitability of change the same way then this gives us further opportunity to develop the same attributes.

It is from such things that we are able to truly develop ourselves as human beings and by understanding our own nature, our own fears and senses we can then start the process of understanding others and helping them achieve their own ambitions.