Failure in life is a very demoralising experience, and upsetting to the point that one may feel like giving up, because failure greatly influences us into thinking that we are not good enough. But everyone has most likely failed at one point, or perhaps many times over. Obviously, no one enjoys failing, but failure, through its life-altering lessons, makes us better. “I always wanted to be a drummer, but I failed multiple times at it, and at one point I decided to quit. Because of spending a lot of time in church drumming, I realised that it also helped with my smoking addiction. I spent a lot of time in church instead of smoking. I also discovered my true calling through church, the times I failed to be a good drummer helped me discover who I am destined to be,” says Baron Dixon, a student in Kigali. Even though failing doesn’t always feel great, what better way is there to push one to not give up on something? Take Belise Iradukunda, a young businesswoman in Kigali, for example, who started selling clothes while she was studying. “I tried three times to sell children’s clothes in my second year of university, all of them were not successful. I made losses and so I decided to quit because no profit was being made, but then something told me that quitting wouldn’t make me the businesswoman I always dreamed of becoming, so I kept on trying. Today, I have a steady business in children and women’s clothing. Failing made me the winner I am today,” she says. Failure can also make you realise that it is time to change in order to get better. “When I was still in high school I used to waste a lot of time telling stories in my study period instead of studying, this lead me to fail my exams. I realised that I would repeat the year if I kept on like that, so I decided to get serious and start studying. For me to pass, my teachers had to make an exception since it was the first time I performed that bad. Failing in class not only taught me that wasting a period of time given to you is losing an opportunity, but that you should never waste any second given to you because it might be what builds your future,” Honorine Ineza, a student, says. In the article ‘The importance of failure’ it states failure as life’s greatest teacher. “Without failure, we’d be less capable of compassion, empathy, kindness, and great achievement; we would be less likely to reach for the moon and the stars,” the article says. Former NBA player, now businessman, Michael Jordan, once said, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” “In order to know how strong we are and how capable we are, we need to fail before we win,” Eddy Roberts Niyomfite, a young entrepreneur and CEO of Noblia, an online shopping market, notes. “Failing helps us grow, know our value, and build resilience. In the end, you will look back on the lessons you learned and realise that you learned something from failing,” he says.
