Can we prepare our youngsters to face Failures, which are as integral to their lives as success are?

Failure is inextricably linked to ones life as much as success, and this is one constant for which there are no aberrations. But then it is a different matter as to how one handles failures in comparison with success, the hard evidence of which the nation witnessed last week, in the tragic death of V G Siddharth, the entrepreneur of Cafe Coffee Day fame, who took the extreme step while failing to effectively combat failure. “I have failed” and “I gave up”, with these dreaded words in a signed, kind of a suicide letter, Siddhartha took the extreme step of jumping into the Netravati River and his body was fished out of the river on July 31st. 

Everybody fails and there are no exceptions to this cardinal dictum and Siddharth was no different. The difference lies in how one faces failures ; what one person sees as a debilitating disappointment another may turn it into an opportunity. Unfortunately in the case of Siddharth, unrelenting pressure from investors and creditors, as well as harassment from tax authorities, perhaps resulted in his extreme form of disappointment leading destiny to play its unscheduled role, aided by inability of Siddharth to handle failures. The lesson that we all must learn from this tragic incident is to prepare ourselves, particularly our youngsters, as much for failures as we are prepared for handling successes and learn to appreciate that failure is integral to ones life and just as we celebrate successes we must learn to handle failures in life.

 
History is abound with failures and some of the most brilliant minds have failed. The best example of which can be seen in Thomas Edison, by far one of the most famous inventors in history. He holds more than one thousand patents and is a name one grows up listening to when it comes to inventions. However, legend has it that while attempting to invent a commercially-viable electric lightbulb, Edison failed more than 10,000 times. When asked how it felt to fail so many times, he merely stated, “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.” A profound way to look at failures.

In his best selling book Brilliant Blunders, Mario Livio, unfolds a fascinating story of blunders committed by the best of minds in the world of science. The author in his scholarly insightful work on the lives of five great scientists, Charles Darwin, Lord Kelvin, Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein, speaks of the colossal mistakes committed by these great scientists who made ground breaking contributions, which changed our understanding of the life and our universe. While it is fashionable to bask in the glory of success and advocate books and articles that speak of success, it may be equally important to ask our students to read books on failures and prepare them to celebrate failures as much as successes, which will be the best way forward to prepare our youngsters to face challenges of modern life.

 
Modern world is full of challenges and in order to face today’s extremely complex and multifaceted challenges, we need an overall new attitude towards failure. This is an important issue which needs to be promoted in our society. This must start very early and right at the school education system itself. We need to openly recognize and promote the overall lack of predictability that comes with most real life challenges in the modern world and fundamentally alter the way in which we view and approach failure. We must prepare our youngsters to be better equipped to engineering the fail, which will allow them to master the inextricable linkage of failures in life and prepare them to face challenges of failures.