“21. Failure Isn’t Failure

I try never to use the word ‘failure’. Because failure doesn’t really exist apart from in our mind. I call it something else: ‘an unsatisfactory outcome.’ Or even better: ‘a stepping stone to success’.

People are often quick to label others a ‘failure’. There are many people who find it all too easy to point out loud and clear when others fall short of their dreams.

But only little people belittle other people. Look at whom President Theodore Roosevelt so smartly gave the real credit to in life:

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly,…who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”