Failure and setbacks are painful, whether you flunked a paper or course, didn’t exactly excel at an internship, or missed some other goal. You’ve probably been there. In a survey by Student Health 101, 67 percent of student respondents said that they had experienced a failure that seriously rocked their self-belief.
Yet, as counterintuitive as it is, we all need failure and setbacks. Some of the world’s most creative and notable people (think empire builders such as the late Steve Jobs) have said that failing is integral to succeeding. “Failure is essential training,” says Sam Weinman, author of Win at Losing: How Our Biggest Setbacks Can Lead to Our Greatest Gains (TarcherPerigee, 2016). This helps explain why, in our survey, 70 percent of students said they had experienced a failure that led to unexpected benefits.
We tend to define success as a single, narrow path from one achievement to another—especially in a competitive academic setting. In reality, success (however we define it) is an equation with many variables. The most important factor is how well we can adapt to and grow from new experiences, researchers say. This is how we develop vital life skills (like resilience, creativity, perspective, compassion, and empathy), which determine how successful we are going forward.
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