failure is crucial for success

In his TEDx Talk, Will Roundtree shares his story of how he turned the failures he faced throughout his life eventually into success. From his childhood to his mid-twenties, he was constantly looked down upon by others and told again and again that he was going to be a failure. He was racially discriminated and had to go through some terrible times when he was in high school and college.

He dropped out of college and moved to Las Vegas where he was homeless for the first three years three months due to bad credit. He eventually got employed but he left that job to pursue entrepreneurship. He invested every single penny of his into a franchise that crashed and he not only lost all his money but he was also sued for $50,000. After that, he started multiple businesses but all of them failed as well. In those trying times, Roundtree shares that he learned an important lesson — to not let his failures define him. 

He had to start looking at his failures in a different light. He realized that failure is inevitable. No matter what we attempt to do, there’s a good chance that we may fail. It’s akin to a baby learning how to walk. He has to go through numerous occurrences of failing and falling until he eventually learns it.

Roundtree also learned that failure is not an event. Often we think that failure is a dead end, an end of the world. But failure is just a process. Negligence of certain key things and lack of preparation is what brings failure. But as we learn the important lessons from it and prepare well next time, we can turn our failure into success.

As we experience failure repeatedly in our life, it’s important that we learn how to roll with the punches and detach our emotions from it. Failure is not irreversible. Nothing is permanent in this world, not even failure. 

Our failure doesn’t mean our life is over, and we’re done. This is far from the truth. Our failures actually prepare us for future victories. Even a little lesson learned from our mistakes can take us a long way.

A failure is nothing but one step closer to achieving your big goals. We need to dissolve our irrational fears about failure and keep moving ahead. Like success, no failure is final. 

We can’t let failures that we encounter stop us in our tracks. We have to develop courage in our hearts and momentum in our stride to keep progressing no matter what.

In simple words, our failures lay the foundation for the major accomplishments in our life. They bring out the best in us and position us to walk on the path that is right for us and helps us live our truth. As Roundtree points out, “Failure is just a price you pay for success.”