Failure (Friend Or Foe?)

How do you feel after an exam you weren't sure of? you just have that conviction that you've failed, even before seeing your exam result. A lot of us must have been in that situation. I have been there quite a lot of times, flipping through my life's pages I wonder if failure was my friend or foe, after much thoughts, events and experiences, I came to a final conclusion.

Failure is the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective. Failure in most cases may be viewed as the opposite of success. Well to me failure is that point where I get to and realize i've not done enough to achieve success. Failure to you might be the end but to another like me it is the beginning of a better result, that you failed in a particular objective doesn't mean you can't make it

Here's the story of Charles Goodyear (The Father of Rubber Products)

Charles Goodyear was a young man from Philadelphia who had a passion for invention, one morning Goodyear walked into the New York retail store of a Rubber company and presented his newly devised valve for preserving Rubber

The manager of the retail store shook his head sadly because his company wasn't in the market for rubber valves, well Goodyear didn't give up on his quest, he pocketed his Valve and went back home. When he got back to philadelphia he was put in jail for debt. That also didn't stop him in his quest, he asked his wife to bring him raw rubber and her rolling pin, there in jail, Goodyear made his first rubber experiments, working on it hour to hour. After he left jail he did a lot of experiments which failed, but that wasn't enough to stop Goodyear from continuing. After five futile years Goodyear was near rock bottom (because he was bankrupt and in debt), his family was hungry,yet he wasn't dissuaded, he lost six out of twelve kids but that didn't stop him,he saw failure as a friend not a foe, at a point Goodyear became very sick but he was still bent on his quest, he sometimes didn't sleep at night because he was scared he was going to die and his secrets die with him. Goodyear achieved great feat later on because even in failure he persevered, "after all failure was my companion" he always said to himself. Today, Charles Goodyear is known to be the Father of Rubber Products With Billion Dollar Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company (The World's Largest Rubber Business) named after him. Life," he wrote, "should not be estimated exclusively by the standard of dollars and cents. I am not disposed to complain that I have planted and others have gathered the fruits. A man has cause for regret only when he sows and no one reaps."

The story of Charles Goodyear should be a perfect example to me and you, when we fail we shouldn't just stop there, we should make failure our friend and see it as a means to achieving greatness. Thomas J. Watson is attributed with saying "If you want to succeed, double your failure rate". Failure gives us another opportunity to try again and make things better, besides a great deal can be learned from things going unexpectedly.

Make failure your friend today and your name will be written in History's Book