Why Failing Is Good For You: 5 Reasons Failure Is Necessary

If you want to know why failing is good for you, it’s important to understand what you can benefit from it. Yes, it can benefit you more than negatively impact where you’re at in life.

Let’s think about it this way: Failing can help us learn from our mistakes while identifying other opportunities. In other words, it can open up more paths to succeed in our endeavors.

Failure sounds like something society has condemned for many years. If someone fails miserably in a business, the common reaction should be “shame on you”, or “you’re no good at that”. 

In this article, I want to kill that thinking and put it to rest. I’ll discuss five reasons why failure can actually benefit you later on. 

Along with that, I’ll go over my thoughts on how I’ve dealt with failure over the years.

1. Why Is Failure Good For Success?
2. Identifies Your Strengths (& Weaknesses)
3. Identifies What You’re Doing Wrong
4. Allows You To Take Risks
5. Challenges You To Not Give Up
6. Builds Character And Growth
7. My Experiences

Why is failure good for success?

Failure is a stepping stone for better things to come. You may try something again and again until you ultimately succeed.

There are a lot of well-known people who have failed in the past. Let’s touch on two famous individuals:

1.) Thomas Edison
It’s been reported that Edison failed about 2774 times before getting a single light bulb to run. If that’s true, you would think it’s time to give up on that simple invention. 

But no, he kept going until he made that possible. Today, we all take electricity for granted and are thankful for it.

2.) J.K. Rowling
As the author of the best-selling book series, Harry Potter, it took her 12 times to get her first book approved by a publishing company. 

You would think that after trying over and over again, especially by the 12th time around, it’s best to throw in the towel. But instead, Rowling kept going to see success become a reality in her life.

There are more people I could list here, but these two individuals are great examples of people who failed dozens of times before experiencing massive success.

So don’t be discouraged, as it’s quite normal to fail often throughout life. With that, let’s go over some reasons why failure can be good for you.

Identifies your strengths (and weaknesses)

There’s a common saying I learned about a few years ago, and that is you cannot be a master at everything. You’re talented in some areas, while in other areas, you have weak spots as well.

For example, if you run a business, you might be great working directly in front of customers. But you’re not the best at doing the little things behind the scenes, such as fulfilling orders or doing administrative work.

Another example might be the following: You’re great at running the books (accounting), but you’re so good at the marketing side of your business. So maybe you can take the time to improve your marketing skills.

If not, you can always outsource or delegate those tasks to somebody else. If there are things you’re very good at, it may be best to hand them over to someone else who can do them better than you.

Identifies what you’re doing wrong

As you do things (experimenting), you think you’re doing the right thing correctly; however, you end up finding out later it’s not the case. 

You realize later on that you’ve made some mistakes. A good example of this scenario could be running ad campaigns for your business. 

You think those campaigns are going to be wildly successful until you find out they’re not making a good return on investment. You end up spending too much, and maybe your messaging may not have worked out as planned.

A relevant article from notimekillers.com

Read next on “Why Is Failure A Form Of Learning? 3 Reasons It Helps Us” to understand failure can help us learn from our mistakes. You might be surprised to know about failure as a good thing, rather something negative.

Allows you to take risks

The idea of failing challenges you to take on risks, whether small or big. Taking risks may not be fun, but it’s necessary to open up new opportunities. 

If the risk was bad enough, you may fail as a result. But at the same time, the biggest thing to take away is you learned from that experience. That’s the whole idea of living and learning.

Sure, if the risk ends up turning out to be good, there may be big rewards to take in. So it’s always good to take on risks. There’s a good old saying to keep in mind: No risk, no reward.

Challenges you to not give up

The more you fail, the more often you’ll keep going at learning a new skill or tackling a project. It’s not just about working harder but working smarter.

Giving up entirely on something is just not an option. In my view, that’s the ultimate failure if you decide to give up and call it quits for good.

Remember how many times it took Edison to get a light bulb to turn on? Or how about somebody else? 

Let’s take on Michael Jordan: He failed many times in order to become one of (if not the best) basketball players in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Here’s a little video on his experiences with failure during his career.

Builds character and growth

Going through failure helps you grow as an individual. If you’re not growing, you’re going to remain stagnant and be the same old person.

Although failing can feel uncomfortable, it helps with growing mentally. What I mean by that is the more often you fail, the less emotional and reactive you’ll be in uncomfortable situations.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you may have started a business before that didn’t work out as intended.  It’s not uncommon for an entrepreneur’s first business to fail, and there are many reasons why that might happen.

Some of them could include inexperience or a lack of understanding of how the business operates at multiple levels. As you get older, you may get a better understanding of how business works in general.

The lessons and experiences you go through can help you do a better job the next time around. So if you had a business that failed before, you’ll know what to not do if you start another one the next time around.

My experiences

Failure is certainly no stranger in my life. It’s something I experience a few times while in my 20s. Around that time, I worked on two businesses that ended up being flops; or let’s put it this way, I had to flush them down the toilet.

I made a lot of mistakes while working on those businesses. But over time, I learned a lot of valuable lessons about how business works. 

I would say it helped me become resilient and a more critical thinker as well.

The one big advantage of starting out young is you have a large window to make lots of mistakes. I believe it’s best to make as many mistakes early on while you’re young.

Using those experiences to make better decisions can help you in the long run. The more experience you have with them, the better off you’ll become in making the right decisions.

Final Words

Failing is not comfortable to go through, but it’s necessary at times. If you want to experience massive success in life, you may have to fail every now and then. 

Some people don’t experience failure that often, while others will go through it many times before seeing success come into play- just like Edison did with the light bulb.

The reasons discussed earlier can help you figure out how to deal with failure in your life. Failure is normal to go through, so it’s best to get used to it.

Your Turn: Do you think failure is a key to success?

I would like to get your thoughts on failure. Do you believe failure is necessary to make success happen?

Have you failed often in life? How did you benefit from those experiences? 

Do you wish you didn’t encounter those failures? Or did you view them as learning opportunities to do better in the future?

Feel free to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below. I look forward to reading your thoughts, and I’ll gladly respond promptly.

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Eric is a content writer and the site owner of notimekillers.com. He takes great pride in helping people manage their time and grow their businesses. Eric is a firm believer in time freedom, as he believes in taking ownership of time. 

“Time is your most important asset. It can be your best friend or worst enemy. How you use your time can shape the future you desire to have.” In his leisure time, Eric loves to write and read whenever possible. He enjoys going for long walks outdoors while doing in-home workout videos every week. You can follow Eric on LinkedIn.