Failures and the perfectionist
I, a 14 year old girl, am the epitome of a perfectionist. I always have to do well on tests, master my projects and excel in my extracurricular activities in order to feel validated and satisfied with myself. However things don’t always go to plan because nobody is perfect and failures are inevitable.
Failures are valuable lessons
For the longest time, I would beat myself up and be overall frustrated whenever I failed or underperformed. That is until one day, when I was just insanely stressed out and overly frustrated with my shortcomings that I learned a valuable and priceless lesson that everyone, regardless of age should learn and be aware of. I realized that failing makes me more than upset and that frustration only makes things worse. I realized that I only get upset with failure because of the fact that I let it upset me. I learned that instead of letting the failures eat me up, I should “eat the fruits of failure”. The fruits of a failure are whatever lessons, stories or experiences you gain from the failure that you receive. It’s the silver lining of failure because, quite frankly, failure can teach us a lot.
Failures help us identify our weaknesses
It helped me identify my weak spots, areas that I could work on and how I could improve in those areas. Failure taught me lessons that I wouldn’t have otherwise learned or been aware of. It helped me improve my marks, understand my mistakes and helped me prevent them from happening again. We have to “eat the fruits of failure” to evoke change to what makes us upset in a healthy manner and overall it allows our brain to declutter; to focus on the positive instead of stressing over something that you can’t change.
This is a lesson that everyone, regardless of age, should understand and realize to conquer and persevere. Although I may only be 14, I think its precious that I started picking my fruits of failure early to ensure that they don’t pick me first.
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