Look at the image above. Majestic, isn’t it? He’s spreading his powerful wings and soaring across the sky, confident in his own ability to fly. But where does he get that confidence? No bird is born KNOWING how to fly; otherwise we’d see chicks fluttering all over the place as soon as they hatched.

The truth is simple, yet amazingly profound: every bird learns how to fly because it dares to fall.

When you think about it, it’s actually quite mind-numbing. Falling doesn’t just mean being hurt; for a young chick high up in a tree, falling means the absolute and final end. And yet it is willing to risk its very life to learn how to soar the skies.

I bet you’re never going to look at any bird again without a sense of awe, are you?

In your life, you may not have such a huge risk involved in any one move you make (and if you do, please don’t make that move simply because I told you to. I’d hate to find out I caused the death of one my readers). But you may have some secret goal or desire that you’ve been holding dear in your heart; a wish that you don’t dare express or reach for because you fear the consequences of failure.

Here’s what I think: you can only be considered to have failed if you’ve stopped trying to succeed.

There is nothing wrong in falling flat on your face the first time you do something. Many geniuses of our world have failed miserably during their first few attempts before succeeding in what made them famous in the first place. Thomas Edison, inventor of the light-bulb, once famously said: “I haven’t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” In fact, I highly recommend reading some other quotes of his here (and perhaps keep one or two of them near you as inspiration).

I wrote an article previously about how bad design is good for you (which you can read here ). While I wrote that in the context of design, the message is applicable across the board: failure is a much better teacher than success. Although I’ve never seen any proof of this, I’m absolutely certain that the ancient Greek civilization (and other cultures who celebrated learning) had no negative perception regarding failure. I think they would have seen it as a necessary step to learn something new. It’s just that in our present world, failure is seen as something bad, something negative, something to be avoided at all costs. While some failures are indeed bad, for the most part, failure is more profitable than success.

Every one of you is amazing. Every one of you is a phenomenal success waiting to happen. But that can only happen when you dare to be a phenomenal failure first.