As many people know, failure can be one of the worst feelings in the world and it can make you feel worthless and meaningless. Nobody likes failing in anything, but what if I told you that failure was actually good for you? I know what you may be thinking. There’s no way that failure is good for you: it’s awful. However, failure actually helps us grow and it teaches us some very important life lessons. 

Failure has the ability to teach us five important life lessons. It can teach us to be resilient in our work and that in order to succeed, one must fail a time or two in their life. Failure gives us experience. When you go through failure and you begin to learn what works and what doesn’t. It gives us knowledge of whatever we are trying to accomplish, so when you walk away from it, you know more than you did before. As we fail and grow, we mature as people and we have a greater understanding of life. The most important lesson failure teaches us is value – we learn that we deserve to succeed and thus we will work harder to succeed. 

When asked why people are so hard on themselves when they fail, Alliance High School English teacher, Roxie Smith replied, “The hardest person to forgive is ourselves, we get caught in the thinking that we are not good enough, and we don’t measure up.” She also said, “Don’t let failure define you, we all make mistakes. Figure out how to learn from the failure and use it as a springboard to learn from.” Many people fail daily and the hardest thing to do is get up, and try again until you succeed. A great example of this is how Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star because his boss did not believe that he had enough imagination. If he would have given up, there would be no Disney, and our lives as we know them would be completely different. 

As Robert F. Kennedy once said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” There is no opportunity for success if one does not go out on a limb and risk failure. If famous inventors had given up after one or two failed attempts, so many things we use daily may not be here. 

Ultimately, failure is one of the worst, but most important things in our lives. Without risk, life would be bland and nothing would ever be accomplished. Failure is actually the first step to success.