Success, we all want it!

A great job with lots of money, being respected by our peers, a beautiful home, the perfect spouse, (note to the reader: doesn’t exist), and a feast of friends. Let’s not forget excellent health and vibrancy so we can galivant through this world looking good with a body of which others would be envious.

In other words, we picture success without any angst, struggle, or failure that is required to be successful. Yet, the reality remains: failure is a prerequisite for success. If this were college, you would be required to take Failure 101 before you were able to take Success 700.

So why do we hide our failures from friends, family, and ourselves as if it’s a scarlet letter to be ashamed? Sure, failing sucks, it’s painful, it’s embarrassing, it’s humiliating, and it reminds us that we aren’t meant to be here, right?

No one talks about the test on which they got an F or the time they froze giving a speech, but we need to start talking about it and understanding why those things happened. If we shift the perception of failing as an embarrassment—to failing as just a lesson to learn that changes the paradigm.

Failure is just a way of gaining new knowledge, so we grow and get better.

Failing forces those who have the courage to assess what really happened. No great achievement was ever obtained without multiple failures. Henry Ford’s first company failed, and he was forced out of the second—how embarrassing!

Assessing what didn’t work is necessary in order to find what does work. We can always change our approach to whatever we’re doing until something works. That’s how we learn and how we grow to become more than we are today. Too many view failing as a sign they aren’t meant to —name whatever it is you wanted to do or become.

I’ve been in business for over 27 years and every time I came upon an organization that was doing one thing or another at a high level it was because they had failed at it previously. It forced the hard assessment of why it’s not going well. That’s an awesome thing because we learn from failure in ways nothing else can teach us.

Failure can also be a strong reminder we’ve strayed from the habits and things that made us successful in the first place. Success can sometimes seduce us into becoming arrogant or lazy…believing we have special powers that the unsuccessful lack. We backslide into poor habits. When we fail because we were lazy it’s humbling because we should have known better, but failure teaches the humility that is necessary to stay true to the habits and disciplines required for success.

Remember when you started a relationship, you gave your time freely, you communicated and sought to listen and understand— you gave gifts to express your affection, you were affectionate, held hands, kissed, and just held your betrothed.

A year or more in and you grunt your hellos to each other, give a small peck on the cheek, or provide responses over your shoulder as you scroll through your phone. You know better because you did it in the beginning. Yes, success should also be about our relationships, without great relationships, we don’t really have anything, do we?

Elon Musk the CEO of Tesla changed the idea of an electric car from novel to mainstream. What many don’t know is that Elon’s company was disdained by many auto experts and investors. Tesla was on the verge of collapse in 2008. In fact, Elon decided to go bankrupt and use the money he had from the sale of PayPal, $35 million, to keep his company going. Two years later he was officially broke. It took personal loans from friends for Elon to launch the Model S and for Tesla to become profitable.

Elon’s SpaceX venture’s first four rocket launches were disasters, three ended with the rockets exploding, and the fourth had a critical failure with a NASA satellite on board. Today we all know that Elon is one of the wealthiest people on the planet, but more than that he’s already left a legacy that’s sure to improve our planet and our lives with electric cars now the preferred vehicle for consumers, and space travel now within our grasp and cost one-tenth of what it took under the NASA program.

So, the next time you fail at something, get excited because you’ve just had the greatest opportunity to learn important information or be reminded about what habits and approaches you need to redeploy.

We all need to fail to be successful so remember you’re only your next failure away from success!