The Piedmont Highlander

The Student News Site of Piedmont High School

The Piedmont Highlander

The Piedmont Highlander

How to succeed at failing

To PHS students, it can feel like achievement is everything. The message is everywhere, from parents on Facebook saying “Look what my kid did!” to the school scrambling for higher test scores. It’s even on a certain plaque on the library wall: “Achieve the honorable.”

It feels appropriate to put our best foot forward, to flaunt our successes and bottle up failure. And as a result, Piedmont has evolved into a high-stress culture where people hide their flaws and shortcomings. It’s not healthy.

Sure, sharing failure may not come naturally, but it’s okay to be outwardly upset about a failure. Open up, because people will be there to support you no matter the outcome. If you would tell a friend that you won a game or aced a test, tell them that you lost your game or failed your test — for your sanity and for theirs.

While we don’t need to scream our failings (or our successes) from the rooftops, we must acknowledge them, at the very least to ourselves.

Failure is a part of life as much as success is. Any number of cliches describe this phenomenon, and while we feel no need to google you up a list, we fundamentally agree with the sentiments that failure is inevitable, that it eventually leads to success, and that one should not live life to avoid failure.

But like most things in life, failure is a matter of perspective. Most mistakes are repairable, and one failed test is not the end of the world. When one stops to zoom out and consider the situation, sometimes the stakes are remarkably low, especially in high school.

Although it can be challenging, try to separate yourself from those around you. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, and we should all be able to define success and failure for ourselves. Other people’s successes don’t make yours any less significant because it shouldn’t be a competition.

Furthermore, we should all practice accepting compliments. People compliment you when you genuinely do something well and they admire you for it. If you dismiss their compliment, you dismiss their standards for what they think is achievement. You raise the bar even higher, and not in a good way. You deny yourself validation for your own achievements.

No one likes a pompous donkey, but a compliment fisher is just as unattractive. Instead, be brave and be vulnerable. You’ll help others feel like they can be more comfortable with themselves too.  Changing an achievement-driven culture starts with each one of us and our ability to fall with grace — or at least our capacity to jump up again when a faceplant is unavoidable.

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