The Ag Angle - November

Failing is a part of life, and failing is usually considered a negative thing, but it can have its benefits. In this article we will discuss what failure is, how to combat the lies that failure will tell you, how to not let failure define you, and how failure can be beneficial. Failure is defined as the lack of success in achieving an intended goal or the omission of an expected action. According to Harvard health, when a person fails, chemically, their brains dopamine levels plummet, and their cortisol levels go up, which means less motivation, more stress, and leads to disappointment. This is a bad thing if the failure is dwelled on, internalized as a personal flaw and if you listen to what failure tells you, that you can't do better and that you are defined by your mistakes. But on the other hand it can be beneficial if handled correctly, when you continue to push through the failure, stay persistent in getting back up, and remind yourself of the truth, that you are defined by getting back up, not by the mistake. When you remind yourself the truth about your identity, the lies that failure tells you loses its power over you, and you now have the power to stay frequent in getting up. The more you do this your brain strengthens the neural pathways to success, and the negative pathways weaken, meaning the more you practice getting up, the easier it will be.

C.S Lewis said “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” What did Lewis mean by this? Well, when we fail we have the opportunities to see where we went wrong in causing the failure. Do you think when William Harley and Arthur Davidson were creating the first Harley-Davidson that they got it perfect the first try? The first Harley was essentially a small engine on a pedal bike, the engine was too weak to go up the hills of Milwaukee, WI and you had to mainly pedal the bike, so it was considered a failure. They started working on a bigger engine, they knew what to do differently because they had failed. Only two years later in 1903 became the birth of the first actual Harley motorcycle (Harley-Davidson.com). When C.S Lewis said “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement” he meant that when we fail we have been given the opportunity to look at where we went wrong and then change that until the goal is obtained just like in this example, they knew that the engine was not powerful enough so they started working on a new and improved version until it was right, and now look at the Harleys today, they go up to 160 MPH compared to the pedal version in 1901 that went almost 40 MPH.

Failures can be beneficial when handled correctly, and they can also be detrimental if handled incorrectly, you just have to make sure you remind yourself of the truth, that you can do better, and that you can get up. Imagine if William and Arthur just gave up, we might not even have the same engine we do today, but all because they kept going we now have one of the greatest motorcycles in history.