The Importance of Embracing Failure for Personal and Professional Growth

We’ve all faced failures in some point of our life whether they were simple mistakes or downright embarrassing moments in life and we wished we locked it away and forgotten from our memories. But, sometimes these memories of failures stay throughout  your life and also pop up from your forgotten past and you replay the situation and why you had failed at that task. Sometimes you may figure out why you failed at that moment  in time and maybe you still don’t know why it happened at all or still haven’t figured it out by now or maybe you will? It is often said that failure is a stepping stone towards success. If we don’t experience failure we won’t succeed, failure teaches us lessons to learn and grow and improve ourselves.

I have encountered failure many times in my life whether it is speaking to someone and embarrassing myself, breaking the garden pots or cutlery tea set or expensive  showpiece, messing up a recipe for a meal, making mistakes in an exam etc.. and often I think back on those actions and evaluate on them e can’t blame anyone else for our failures. We must take responsibility for our actions and learn from our mistakes. 

I’ve read that Failure offers 3 gifts: Humility, Compassion and Openness to learn. These are the gifts one acknowledges to learn and grow.Understanding this is an essential trait where you must take responsibility for your actions and accept it and learn from it and become better human beings. Failure also helps us understand risk taking which is an important part of our life. When we fail, we realise that the willingness to take risks and step outside of our comfort zones to achieve our goals

 In 10th I’ve felt failure after getting the results not knowing what should I do next, which college should I enrol, what can I do next reflecting on the mistakes on why I got these grades/marks in 10th. After knowing my result my parents tried to cheer me up though deep down inside I knew I was never satisfied with the grades, I tried my best with the SSC Board exams but after the results I failed to meet my self imposed expectations and planned to be better in my academics henceforth. For my future  there was a decision I had to make. Either to go the normal way following the normal formula, parents would tell their kids to go to college Or take that risk and decide what was best for me and my future. So I enrolled for a diploma in Computer Engg. and finally managed to get a college program in that stream. After learning how i struggle with my SSC Board I decided to see and observe how other studied and go about their projects in class and practicals and I Learned from that but it wasn’t easy  learning a new languages or understanding the peripherals and components of the system it took time and I got the hang of it eventually, Another example is riding a bike i used to struggle with riding a cycle and gave up hope trying in my early years as a kid. After many years I finally tried learning to ride a bike and through many failed attempts on my own later I got the hang of it.

The Skill of Failing, Learning and Growing

Learning a particular skill, thing or a hobby takes time and maybe sometimes years for a person to even master it but without failure you wouldn’t succeed. Most of the famous people had many failures before they could have succeeded in something, for example Micheal Jordan missed more than 9000 shots in his career and lost 300 games. 26 times he had been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. He failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why he succeeded. 

As failure is easy but trying  again takes courage and the ability to  learn and recover quickly by adapting to the change and sharing our knowledge is what helps us to learn and grow and move on. As we learn and grow we acquire wisdom, this wisdom may also arise due to a case in failure. Each of us wants to be successful in life but failure also hurts and it doesn’t make us feel good. It can be difficult to pick ourselves up to try again. Albert Einstein also quoted that “Success is a failure in progress”. Motivation is an important lesson for our failure as it helps fuel us to be motivated to succeed.

Learning to fail can help build your mental fitness, one step at a time. And with strong mental fitness, you can unlock your full potential and achieve your dreams. Reflection is an important part of failure. Without reflection, we wouldn’t learn. It’s important that after we fail, we take a moment to sit with it. We’re human beings. That means we enter this world with a lot of opportunities for growth and personal development. Together, we’re on this collective journey to better ourselves (and the world around us). But in order to do so, we need to fail.

The Failure (what lead me there + decision)

Fast forward to the final year of my degree where campus placements started to take place. Everyone wanted to get a job and be placed in a good company, however for me I tried giving multiple interviews for different companies multiple times answering multiple interviews and getting selected in some company’s interview  only to fall short of the next round cut off list. This was my failure and I couldn’t understand why I was keep on failing at these types of interviews, maybe because was I not up to the tasks these companies had offered me or wasn’t myself a valuable asset to the company which they are looking for..Thoughts and self doubt started plaguing my mind and due to the bad response I was getting from the company placement I’ve restricted myself from taking part or appearing for more of these job offers.

Many months I was jobless after finishing my degree I was giving Interview after interview after interview but to no avail I met the requirements nor I qualified as what those company wanted until one day a friend of mine asked me if I could join he’s start up company Spyke Socials where he would help me with an apprenticeship/internship program in his company for which I’ll also gain experience. Along that time I also enrolled in an online course to better myself and keep up to date with the latest tech. I worked there for around 4 months as a Backend Developer learning the ways of coding and maintenance. Sometime later there was a Notice or an advert displayed on the newspaper, youtube and spread through the group chat on whatsapp regarding the Job Fair 2022 for unemployed people. I had been for Job Fair 2021 in Ponda once and I tried my luck there so this time I would try my luck again at the Job Fair held in November 2022, Before going i had asked my friends, my parents also about the Job Fair and they gave me the green light which would benefit as they said to me so I decided to go for the Job Fair held at Curtorim. As I was mostly Inclined towards computers,Information technology, designing and development, I scouted those companies that offered those posts and proceeded to give interviews for them.

The Rebound (decision)

I finally got selected at the Job Fair for Haztech Innovation, so I had to google and read about what technology stack and clients the company worked with on the day they called me for the walk-in interview. I had a choice between Web Dev, Mobile Dev and Graphic Designer. I mostly had some experience in backend for the web from my Startup company Soyke Socials, my final year project was mostly app based and I also had done a few illustrator and creative designs from my online course which I did for MyCaptain course.

During the interview I submitted my resume and my work design and was to choose between Mobile Development and Graphics Designer. I wanted to choose both but I decided to go for graphic designing as I havent explored much about it. So the boss decided that there will be a 6 months internship training to check my performance for Graphic designing and so it began a new start to my journey. But first I needed to complete my previous company formalities and work which was pending after a few days. Once that was done I could start working at Haztech Innovation.

The Work (what it’s like + what my future)

First day in and the environment or the people working there was friendly, I began to learn more things day by day and tools for graphics designing and how the process for creating the post/creatives was done. Here we would have the designer group having meetings in the morning to discuss our tasks to do and wind up whatever was completed at the end of the day. We also learned from one another learning new tools of the trade so we can do the job properly some of these are basics editing fo designs using Canva, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop to video editing and making reels by working with VN Editor on phones and Premiere Pro, Canva and using Templates on laptops and better understand what are the requirements or things the clients need for us to design for them. There is a motto in Haztech “Work Smart Not Hard” but I’m all about working hard and I put in the Hard work Day in and Day out and combining Smart work I learned to efficiently work to create the designs. Throughout the time I spent here at Haztech Innovation I’ve grown into this designer role and working here is great great and has been great for the past 3 months, as for my future in designing I plan on completing my internship for graphic designing here at Haztech after that I really don’t know what my future holds but that’s for me to decide and write maybe for another story..?

“Who controls  the past controls the future , who controls the present controls the past”  Robert T Kiyosaki