How I learned to embrace the art of failure

To those of you reading this and know me pretty well, perhaps you'll find it easier to understand where I'm coming from with this.

The obsession for perfection, as I like to call it, has pretty much shaped the kind of person that I am as of today. That determination and hunger for success, instilled within my body from a very young age, is what has led me to achieve medal after medal and one excellent grade after another.

Performing exceptionally well is simply an expectation nowadays, and anything less would be deemed as what you'd call absolute failure. Period.

I can honestly say that throughout my life, things have turned out just about how I've always hoped it would. After all, what more is there to complain about 6A*s in my IGCSE exams and a whole host of accomplishments both in academics and sports during my primary as well as high school years right? From the public's perspective, it truly must have seemed as if this boy could do no wrong as he kept delivering quality results, and yet I still wasn't satisfied with myself. Scary don't you think? The perfectionist mentality was further ingrained in my DNA. Idealism had now taken over realism.

That was until the 6th of July, this past Monday. I screwed up and was made to pay for it. Big time.

One missed submission and my A vanished into thin air. Just like that, in the blink of an eye.

I shed buckets of tears as you would expect but nothing I did then would've changed the fact that I just lost my ideal grade. The only route back to an A now was to drop the course and retake it once more the following semester. Two days before turning sixteen and this was what I got. Just great.

Listening to advice from family and friends, I then started to look at the bigger picture.

It eventually came down to the point that nobody is perfect. In life, you make some mistakes and lose certain things along the way. It's about learning to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and looking ahead to the next challenge. While of course the damage was already done in relation to my marks, I learned what was perhaps the most important understanding of reality so far in my life which is that idealism does not exist in this world. Even if it's always important to strive for the best, one should know when it becomes a mental issue and should consider lowering their expectations for the benefit of themselves and others. I was able to reassure myself that there was still the possibility of getting a good grade even if it couldn't be an A. Sometimes, a mistake allows you to become more aware of your shortcomings and motivates you to do better the next time. Owning up to it and then looking at ways to improve is where it ultimately matters.

I take it as a lesson learned, and I hope those who are reading this right now have done so with your own problems as well.

That's it for this blog! Hope you enjoyed what I've shared and stay tuned for the next one. It'll be another cracker!