Failure is said to be the stepping stone to success, yet everyone is scared of failure. Failure to get good marks, to secure a desirable job, or to get the love of your life could lead to frustration or depression. Why are we so scared of failures in life? Is it because from childhood it is ingrained in our mind that to fail is a shameful thing?
What exactly is failure? How does one decide that one has failed? Schools set the highest marks (in numbers, hundred is the highest marks one can get in any subject) or schools have grades, which also reflect numerical scores. The lowest mark or grade assigned signifies failure in any subject. Thus, parents, teachers or the system decides who has failed or who has come out with flying colours in any exam.
The child who fails or just gets average marks can be made to feel ashamed by parents or the school. This feeling of being a failure can make a child feel inadequate and under-confident. When parents keep comparing the marks of their child with other classmates, the child can be affected mentally and emotionally without the parents or child realising this. As the child grows into a young adult, life can change and the child may start performing better. Therefore, it’s better not to stress on the marks scored as a benchmark of any child’s capabilities. Marks do not really define the intelligence or capability of any child. If a child continues to feel like a failure, then it leads to frustration, which in turn causes disillusionment in life.
As an adult, failure is related to our desires and expectations from life and people around us. Most parents have the desire to get their own aspirations fulfilled via their children. For example, I was a good table tennis player, but I could only represent my state, though I aspired to reach the national level. Therefore, I hoped that one day my child would also play table tennis and represent India.
However, fortunately for me, I realised early as a parent that my son was academically inclined and his interest in sports was limited to watching sport on TV or playing computer games. I never pushed him to fulfil my aspirations. Otherwise, he too may have grown up feeling inadequate. Parents need to let the child follow his or her own instinct and inherent tendencies, so that they can see success in whatever they do.
Observe a toddler, who tries to grab a toy lying a little far away. The child starts crying in frustration if unable to grasp the toy. Sometimes, parents keep toys out of reach to test how their children are growing up and whether they have developed the ability to get things on their own. We as parents tend to put high benchmarks to be achieved by the child. Inadvertently, we are setting impossible goals for the child. Often people try to judge their own life by comparing it with their friends and family members’ material achievements. This can lead to frustrations, because it is wrong to evaluate success and failure merely in terms of possessions and bank balances.
Frustration triggers negative emotions and we get into the habit or trap of negative thinking. Negativity impairs the mind and now we seem to attract failure―almost like magnets. In the long run, we become victims of a vicious circle of sadness―the gloom deteriorates into clinical depression. Dale Carnegie puts it succinctly when he says, “Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.”
Let’s not give in to worry, for it’s never too late to control the situation. A little bit of positive thinking and a change in our attitude to ourselves and to people around, can overcome our tendency to be bleak and anticipate failure. We must begin to implement this change, first within us adults, and then move on to gently pass on our learnings to our kids. We must teach kids to give their best, but accept the result without quantifying it as a measure of success or failure. Let’s not burden our children with our sky-high expectations and imagine that they would excel in every task they undertake. Set realistic goals for them.
Help children to explore their inherent strengths and then encourage them to follow their dreams based on their strengths. Teach them to analyse failure so that they can find out the reasons behind them and take steps not to repeat faulty moves. By all means, dream―but dream taking into consideration the real world.
Failures are not bad, but repeated failures mean we have not learnt from our mistakes or not built upon our strengths. We may not have control over Lady Luck, but we do have the capacity to shun laziness and make hard work a habit. Let us teach our children not to be scared of failures but to look upon them as stepping stones to success.
We tend to define success and failure in terms of wealth, power and fame―all these generally come bundled together. Their presence is termed as success and absence, failure. But they are like the ingredients of an explosive. When they burst, they blow up in your face.
On the other hand, if we learn to be content with what we have, live in gratitude of everything we achieve in life rather than complain about what we do not have, then we would have reached the first step of looking at both success and failure with a certain degree of detachment.
The most quoted verse of Bhagavad Gita is:
कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन |
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि || 47 || chapter 2
You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction. (BG: 2.47)
Therefore, let’s listen to Sri Krishna and teach our children to do whatever they need to do with enthusiasm to give their best effort and then to accept the outcome joyfully―without comparing themselves to anyone else, for each one of us is a unique Child of God. Real success lies in not conquering the world, but in conquering our desire to be always successful―and in achieving an eternal state of contentment. If we learn to be content, then failure will find no mention in our life―and we will understand the real meaning of success.
Nita Agarwal is an ex-Table Tennis State player, qualified teacher, self-taught budding painter, a successful blogger, who writes about her observations of life and people; and most importantly, a working housewife.
We often keep nurturing in ourselves an unconscious desire, a bundle of expectations and it manifests in many ways, one amongst that is to see our children not merely perform but outperform.
In our failure to identify this lies a big problem in child development which in our own ways we believe to carry out with complete precision.
Growth motivation as such takes a back seat for us in nurturing the child than growth obsession.
Creating an ambiance of zest and zeal for growth rather than inculcating a “fearful disposition of underperformance & failure” is the sole responsibility of parents and to that end, we need parental awareness and education.
Thanks for sharing such a pertinent post Nita ji.
Beautiful comment. Adds to the theme of the blog. Thanks Baturamji for leaving a comment here. ??
As young parents, we are too busy attending to multiple things in life and more than often, tend to forget that we are adopting a negative attitude in life and venting out our ire on our innocent, helpless children. Wish we read such articles at that stage of lives to remove the fear of failure from our children’s minds and nurtured them to grow up with more love and care.
In my opinion, present day parents are more aware of these facts.
Your article is quite an eye opener. Just loved it Neeta.
Thanks Arti for reading and liking the blog,