I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Pablo Picasso
In Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), we encourage people to risk failing at goals and dreams. In many ways, it is good to fail. When we fail, we have attempted to do something that gives our life meaning. When we fail, we have had an experience that teaches us something. Through failure, we develop the courage, vision, knowledge, and skill to succeed in the future and to enjoy life to the fullest.
Sadly, people often fear failure. This fear stunts their growth and lowers the quality of their life. REBT can help you overcome this self-defeating instinct to fear failure. A core concept of REBT is unconditional self-acceptance. When you accept yourself, whether or not you succeed, you free yourself to try new things. Rigid and extreme attitudes undermine the development of unconditional self-acceptance. When you hold the attitude “I must not fail,” you will likely consider yourself “a failure,” which is an extreme attitude. Whether you recognize it or not, failures (that is, as people go) do not exist because, through failing, you may set the stage for succeeding in the future. You never know what the future holds for you. You can only define yourself as a failure but never prove yourself with facts that you are a failure. If you stayed with the facts, the most far-reaching statement you could make is that you often fail. If you disciplined your mind, you would not feel less worthwhile (as a person) for failing regardless of how often it occurred because you would merely evaluate your performance. Some challenging human endeavors have a high fail rate for all of us, and as long as you rate what you are doing, you will never feel shameful about yourself (that is shameful about you as a person) for having failed multiple times. You also would only feel very disappointed or frustrated but never depressed or even hopeless for having failed. The ability to continue to try and fail ultimately leads to outstanding human achievements.
The other extreme attitude that undermines trying new things is seeing failure as awful, terrible, or the end of the world. Failure can only be validly rated on a scale from 0% (not at all bad) to 100% (completely bad). When evaluating something you attempt and fail at, by definition, nothing can be 100% bad. Because you learn at least something from every endeavor, failing cannot be 100% bad. Failure is not awful because good can come from bad if only you look for it.
If you are dissatisfied with the amount of pleasure you derive in life, the solution may be to fail more, not less. You may be playing life too safely, not getting out of your comfort zone, trying new things, and learning from those experiences. Think things through, so do not take foolhardy risks that are dangerous. REBT is against dogma and extremes. Calculated risk-taking is sensible. You cannot have a guarantee that your best-laid plans will succeed. Think things through, experiment, take what appears to be a calculated risk, learn from the experience, accept yourself, and try again.
REBT encourages you to see that humans are happiest when striving for goals, learning, mastering new skills, and having significant involvement with other humans. Keep moving towards goals by allowing yourself to fail.
You will never be a “failure” even though you remain a fallible human who failed.