Do you feel like a failure?

I’ve yet to achieve the Oliver Twist award for getting Great Answered on an orphaned question, so I am a Fluther failure.

First of all, good question.
Second of all, what you have listed there is very inspirational.
Lastly, there have been moments in my career where I became very discouraged and felt like I was doing everything wrong. I quickly snap out of feeling that way because I realize, in order to succeed, sometimes you have to fail and most of the time those failures are necessary in order to reach your goals, which doesn’t really make them failures after all, I guess.
Making mistakes is vital for growth so I try hard not to get too down on myself when things don’t go according to plan.
I feel fortunate to be able to do what I love and having obstacles, challenges and setbacks are naturally apart of the journey. I respect and appreciate them.

Wow… what great information you have supplied with your question.

As I child I hated – no loathed – playing the piano. I just couldn’t play, or so I thought. It is only since I became an adult that I realised, yes, I CAN play the piano, and I can’t ever imagine not playing. I think I did feel like a failure, because I thought I wasn’t good at playing. Now I know differently.

Good question. Im a failure and i cant try again cuz my crush and I are in an unbelievably awkward situation.

Read those list of people…and knew about a few of them! Michael Jordan being cut from the basketball, knew that….but, the greatest basketball player of all-time, being cut! Hate to be the man that did it..loll

Glad you guys enjoyed it.

What seems to be a common denominator is in most of your examples each person got a cold hard dose of reality in that there is no easy way in life….someone told them so which gave them the incentive to try harder and show them that yes they will succeed and gave them an I told you so! Sometimes being challenged by someone is what it takes to motivate yourself to try harder.

I went to a lecture and one point was that as an artist you have to almost “strive for failure” so that you are so use to it so rejection doesn’t phase you. The lecturer gave an example where two students had a competition to see who could get rejected from the most juried shows. I think that’s pretty brilliant because I’m sure they were accepted in some as well.

Never do :) inspirational stuff,btw:))

I don’t think that in failing one becaimes a failure. It is a failure to quit, to give up and stop trying, but not to fail once. There is a Japanese proverb that says: “fall down seven times, get up eight.” If you fall and do not get up, that is the point at which you are a failure; the trick is to get up one more time than you fall down, and then you can never be considered a failure.

I’ve had people telling me I wasn’t good enough for anything my whole life, even medical professionals. Before ADD was a common diagnosis, they had just decided I had a learning disability and put me in slower classes.

I was diagnosed with ADD in the 6th grade and was given Adderal. I subsequently took a pile of standardized tests: my IQ was extremely high, and by the end of the 8th grade I took the ACT with a score of 28.

I don’t mention these numbers to brag because I don’t really think they mean anything for one and they shouldn’t mean anything for two, but I was told for most of my life that I was stupid and that I wouldn’t be able to accomplish much. It was still difficult for me since I didn’t know how to learn, but I made it through high school in the top of my class, into one of the best Universities around, and I’ve been a straight-A student since, had several successful jobs in my field of study, and continue to grow beyond any other student I’ve met.

All this for someone who was thought to have a severe learning disability for the first 8 years of his life.

I was raised to believe I would never be anything but a failure. I believe that I have to do something mindblowingly spectacular in order to be successful—in terms of the way I was brought up.

On the other hand, I’ve done all right for myself if I compare myself to most Americans, or to everyone in the world, instead of the top five percent of Americans.

I think my father wanted me to do something worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. He failed at that, so he had hopes that I would succeed. He never said any of this, but he never expressed any happiness about anything I did.

Anyway, I internalized these standards, and of course, like 99.9999999% of the world’s population, I have failed. I know these standards are ridiculous, but I haven’t been able to dislodge them from my brain so far. I try not to think about it.

Just goes to show, believe in yourself & hit your goals, regardless of setbacks.

The only caveat I would give to such a great list is that people need to know they can’t do anything really important to them solely by themselves. I think in the US, there’s this ideal of “rugged individualism” when the fact of the matter is no one accomplishes anything great with no help whatsoever. To imply otherwise can be unnecessarily intimidating.

Even Thomas Edison’s wife fixed his meals while he was absorbing rejection and seeing which methods didn’t work. She comforted him during those inevitable moments when he was frustrated, and he had assistants in his lab. When Steven Spielberg would sneak onto the Paramount lot as a teen, someone had the choice whether to kick him out when they caught him, but they didn’t. There’s always people helping you. If you have a big goal, don’t be afraid to ask for help.

@noyesa You don’t need to boast… your academic achievements tell it all. Well done to you.
Did this boost your confidence?

@partyparty Yeah I generally am very optimistic. I’ve slowly learned to be that way since my “default” for a long time was pessimism. It doesn’t hold me back anymore and I’ve proven to myself that everything everyone said was wrong.

@aprilsimnel: and Renoir’s wife, to whom he was constantly and publicly unfaithful with his rose-colored young models, organized him, their many children, the maids, the cook, and the models themselves, all year round, including moving them from one end of France to the other so he could paint in the best possible climate as the weather changed. But who cares about her?
I do.
And as a husband, Renoir was a terrible failure. But we only think about him as a painter.
Moral: you can’t win em all. (@wundayatta take note)

How can anyone write 564 books and have any of ‘em be of quality? That’s the first thing, :). Secondly, a guidance counselor in high school told me I’d never be able to get into a school like NYU and should instead apply to community schools and Stevens University School for Technology. And I wasn’t even interested in technology! I looked at her and I said ‘mark my words, I will only apply to NYU, no others, no safeties, no bs, and these applications here that you gave me, I am putting them in the trash’ and I threw them in the garbage, risked it all, applied only to NYU and came back 2 years later to tell her that no thanks to her I am a successful pre-med at NYU majoring in biology. She was livid, I slammed her door. There will always be people in your way and no matter how old one is (I am now done with college and grad school and have birthed two children and these past couple of months am dealing with nasty attitudes from some so called colleagues at one of my sites and this is all making me feel vulnerable again) people can shake you – but I never felt like a failure in any long-term sense. I have confidence in my abilities and always knew I am capable. Well, not always, but I know now.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir so we’re supposed to say good for you? Why did you have to be so rude to her – you could have shown your worth and integrity by behaving more graciously, not stooping to her level, who cares what her small brain makes her say, but by the time you had finished demonstratively throwing papers in the bin and slamming the door, your accomplishments were diminished

@candide No, you’re not supposed to say anything – I am not going to defend any actions my 16 year old self made. However, I will say that she, given her position, has ruined many people and was terrible at her job and deserves more than what I’ve told her. My accomplishments came later and so were never diminished.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir John Creasy, the English novelist who wrote 564 books, was rejected 753 times before he became established

How can anyone write 564 books and have any of ‘em be of quality? That’s the first thing

Didn’t know we were attacking the quailty of his books. Thought the 753 rejections sure proved his determination not to fail.

Thought this was interesting, since you brought up the subject.

Prolific English writer, who published in a 40-year career 562 full-length books under 28 pseudonyms. However, the quality of his work was high. Creasey’s 21 police procedural stories, depicting police officer Gideon from Scotland Yard, were well received by critics. Gideon’s Day (1955) was adapted into screen in 1958; the director was John Ford. The novel followed Gideon’s Scotland Yard team pursuing several cases simultaneously. Creasey also wrote plays, short stories, and juvenile books. Much of the author’s work is now out of print, but his influence has been acknowledged by several of the leading English mystery writers. In 1987 the critic and mystery writer H.R.F. Keating included Gideon’s Week (1956) among the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published. “Trite but true,” says Gideon in the beginning of the story, and Keating continues: “You could apply that label to the whole book. And it is not as derogatory as you might think. There is a certain triteness, yes, but there is also a great deal of simple, detailed truth. And it has a powerful cumulative effect.” (from Crime & Mystery: the 100 Best Books by H.R.F. Keating, 1987)

@Simone_De_Beauvoir
even after you’ve gone off and done what you wished successfully you still enjoy bragging about how rude you were

@noyesa Good for you. Hope you hold your head up high.

If I gave up every time someone told me that I was no good/ would never succeed for various reasons (from my ethnicity to whatever other reason just as stupid) or when I did not succeed at something, I would just have ceased to exist.

In some things I have failed, such as in my attempt to become a Nurse Practitioner when I had a forced move near the end of my LVN training (I was aiming for step up eventually to NP and did not live anywhere near a nursing school for well over a decade). Long ago I abandoned my desire to be a veterinarian after volunteering at the SPCA and seeing so many animals killed for no reason other than they were not wanted and so much abuse.

So, yes, there are individual things I failed at. However, the things I failed at or abandoned were replaced by other things.

I could say that I failed relatively recently because I went from solid middle class to poor thanks to Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama when my wife’s job and job prospects evaporated (we live in Michigan and it is bad news here) and medical bills escalated as my hours were cut back. I am still trying so it is not a failure.

The day I stop trying is when I fail.

@candide what’s it to you, anyway? you don’t know me. She was inappropriate to me – I was rude to her, she deserved it. What, are you a guidance counselor that kills kids’ dreams?

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Don’t be juvenile. I just don’t think it’s worthy of you to brag about being rude to somebody, especially as it was not necessary after you had proved her wrong already by accomplishing what you wanted. It is just a shame. But your vehemence towards me lets me know that you probably understand little about civility anyway, and take things, and yourself, way too seriously.

@candide yeah, we’re done here. thanks for the conversation

No.

I was never captured and convicted.