Failure: An inevitable milestone that every individual has to experience innumerable times throughout their lives . What we face as we progress through our career trajectory is most often the primary setback. It is the “defined failure” which we as students experience when expectations are requisitioned on us or as prospective employees when the hunt for employment is often a futile endeavor. Setbacks also happen during prime adulthood when personal finances seem dubious while the needs and necessities of old age only seem to inch closer.

Another type of failure is the one that we face in our personal lives. These include relationship failures, friendship fall outs or even the regret upon losing a near and dear one. Personal failures could also include setbacks when the moral compass is compromised bringing along a sea of emotions like guilt, remorse and self-doubt.

Experiencing such failures is often connoted to negative events and while it is true that setbacks bring along their fair share of dejection, self-doubt and despair, the silver lining is that they also bring with them a plethora of learning that aid us in our growth while expanding our vistas of knowledge and giving us a clarity of thought. With every failure that a person endures in life, they build the resilience to do better the next time. The student who failed to live up to expectations will prove his mettle by excelling in a field of his interest, the employee who could not procure a job will defy failure by excelling in her own start-up business and the adult who failed with personal finances will get better in decision making.

While failure in itself is a disappointing event, the redirection that it provides is worth taking a risk for. The stepping stones to success are failures redefined and these stepping stones are not smooth, but rather very uneven and made of gravel and dirt and pebbles, some big and seemingly insurmountable and others small and like a pat on the back, but all redefining our goals. As economics says, the opportunity cost of something is essentially giving up the next best alternative, and that is exactly what the recalibrated definition of failure today is. In order to gain the best experiences and learn the better path to success, one needs to forgo the next best opportunity and take a longer route . At the end of the day, it is safe to say that failure is infact not a defeat, it is just a snarled detour to success.

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