Failure is a catalyst for creativity – as long as you don’t let it defeat you.

Are we so afraid of failure, that we don’t even try? Or do we play it so safe, that we don’t give failure the opportunity to let us grow? Failure is painful. I’ve failed, I know.

I’ve also gone through periods of my life where I don’t fail. It feels good not to fail, but I also feel stale. The dull constant pain of stagnation is much worse than the sting of failure. Sometimes the sting of failure leads to the dull constant pain of stagnation, and that pain, that dull aching in your soul becomes what you know. Then the fear becomes breaking away from what you know.

You feel it though, when you see somebody successfully launch a business. Hell, when somebody launches and fails. Because you watch them get right back up again. They feel the sting of failure and of defeat, but they don’t know the dull ache of stagnation. They create.

To create, we have to try. To try means that we will fail. Feel that sting of failure, and let that failure direct us to our next endeavor. Keep trying, and keep failing.

Even after we succeed, and we will, stagnation can creep up. Maybe even especially after we succeed, depending on our personalities. We should enjoy our successes, even celebrate them, but not stagnate in them. Success is not the end of the journey. It’s a basecamp for the next phase of our journey. We’ve made it this far, so what’s next?

Failure and success both provide closure for a chapter, and both let us start again. In that, they provide a platform that we need to progress from. It’s when we stagnate though, that we lose that momentum.

Work, try, study, fail, and do it over and over again. Let failure be a catalyst for creativity. Learn, grow, and create. We can’t always direct the outcomes of what we do, but we can be as creative as we know how. It just includes failing from time to time.