“There are no failures–just experiences and your reactions to them.” ― Tom Krause
The Book The 25 principles of success by Jack Canfield helped me brace myself over failure. It made me realize failure is an illusion, it doesn't exist, rather, we create it. For example, If I apply for a job and I'm not selected, nothing about me changes. I didn't have the job before I applied and I still didn't get the job after I applied, it remained the same. It only gets worse if I go around telling myself I'm dull, I can never get employment, my mates are doing better, etc. The same happens to a guy who's turned down by a girl, he goes around telling himself I'm ugly, no one likes me, etc. We create the feeling of failure ourselves which in reality is just a myth.
I didn't get this understanding in a day, there were moments I felt rejected, and told myself some lies about myself and how unworthy I was. I wrote my WAEC examination three times and I was already feeling like I can't make it. Somehow, society has made us believe we are supposed to succeed at everything or get approval for everything to be considered a genius, so we react negatively, telling ourselves some false statement, and then we consider ourselves to be a failure. Before now, I cursed myself , felt bad for days, refused to try, and have low self-esteem about myself whenever I fail but that changed when I started to read books about failure.
If our reasoning is nourished, our attitude changes. This was what changed my attitude toward failure, I no longer see failure as a thing that exists. I particularly like the statement made by Thomas Edison when he was asked about his multiple failures trying to build a light bulb, his response was
"I didn't fail, I only knew multiple ways in which it can't work."
If one doesn't see rejection and failure as one, he wouldn't be bothered by the number of times he tries; instead, he'll consider them as factors that don't work. Just as Tom Krause says "There are no failures, just experiences and your reaction" it's your reaction that determines your feeling and every rejection are experiences that leave behind a lesson as to what works or doesn't work.