I've struggled a lot in my life with feeling like a failure. I lived in a 'prison of perfectionism,' holding myself to a standard I couldn't possibly live up to. Then I became a mom, and all of a sudden, there arose even more opportunities for failure.
Some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously, that you might as well not have lived at all. In which case you have failed by default. Failure gave me an inner security that I had never obtained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things that I could not have learned any other way. I discovered I had a strong will and more discipline than I had suspected.
You may be saying: 'I have failed in life and shall always be a failure.' That is because you are ever looking back, living in your failure and thereby bringing to you more failure. Reverse this attitude of mind; work it the other way and live in future success.
I'm happy that I wrote 'How Should a Person Be?' and I wouldn't have written that exact book if we had just done the play. So much of the book is about the anxiety of failure - the failure of the play and the failure of the divorce and the failure of not feeling like a good person.
Good subjects must feel guilty. The guilt begins as a feeling of failure. The good autocrat provides many opportunities for failure in the populace.
The fear of failure never goes away. In many ways, you could argue that success multiplies the opportunities for failure. It's just more of an argument for becoming more comfortable with it.
I had a lot of successes, but what really made me fearless was my complete failure at Zidd-Davis. Once you've lived through that, you know you can survive, and you're not as scared... There's nothing to build confidence like real achievement, but also like real failure.
Life is struggle. Even to stand up is a struggle against the law of gravity and I think that the joy of life in the struggle itself - not the victory - because if it were we'd all lose. We're all gonna croak. We all lose the battle of life so if you can't find fun in the fight to live and to live to the fullest then you're a failure already, before you even start.
At times failure is very necessary for the artist. It reminds him that failure is not the ultimate disaster. And this reminder liberates him from the mean fussing of perfectionism.
I was super doubting myself and if I was even cut out to live this life, but then the fans came to my rescue. And I think we all have those moments, but every failure is necessary, especially in the entertainment industry.
Instead of failure being the outcome, failure became not trying. And it forced me at a young age to want to push myself so much further out of my comfort zone.
I don't live my life based on fear of failure. I live my life with an understanding of failure and I'm embracing it, because every time I fail, I learn something new.
Failure to shed tears is a failure to live life fully. And the one thing that life requires of us all is to live it. Never be embarrassed by your ability to be alive.
The opposite of success is not failure. Unsuccessful efforts are not failures unless they so discourage you that you abandon further efforts to achieve your goal. Even then, the venture or effort may be a failure but you are not. Failure is an event not a character trait.
Twenty-two years ago Judge [then-Senator Stephen] Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young then; he a trifle younger than I. Even then, we were both ambitious; I, perhaps, quite as much so as he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure--a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success.
How come we never use prison, the failure of prison, as a reason not to give more prison? There's never a moment where we say, 'OK, well, prison hasn't worked, so we're not going to try that again.'
My brain . . . it cannot process failure. It will not process failure. Because if I sit there and have to face myself and tell myself, 'You're a failure' . . . I think that's almost worse than death.