8 Reasons That Explain Why You Fail

Everyone that’s ever tried to accomplish anything knows what it’s like to fail. While there are numerous reasons for failure, most of them can be boiled down to just a few possibilities.

Understanding why you failed is important, because it educates you on how to improve your odds for success in the future.

See if you can identify the cause of your most significant failures in this list of common reasons.

These reasons may help you to understand why you failed:

1. Failing to learn from past experiences. You have the opportunity to be a little bit better at life each day. Every day you’re on this planet, you’re learning new things.
   • Each success, failure, neutral result, and interaction with others is a learning moment that you can apply to the future.
   • Analyze each day. What did you do well? Where did you go wrong? If you don’t evaluate your day and your results, you won’t recognize what you’ve learned.
2. Not acquiring the necessary knowledge. The more you know about what you’re trying to accomplish, the better your approach can be. When you first begin any new task, your knowledge is likely to be insufficient to ensure success.
   • Spend some time learning a little more each day. However, it’s important to avoid the common tendency to spend too much time learning and not enough time doing. This is just another form of procrastination in many cases.
3. Avoiding commitment. Determination and regular effort are important components of success. Many failures are due to a lack of commitment.
4. Distractions. Life is full of appealing distractions today. It’s never been easier or less expensive to find mesmerizing distractions than it is right now. Eliminating unnecessary distractions will do a lot to enhance the odds of your success.
   • Ideally, your objective will be the most interesting option available to you – more interesting than social media, cat videos, or mindlessly watching the TV.
5. Fear of failing. The fear of failure might be the most common fear. We fear wasting our time, embarrassing ourselves, and failure in general.
   • Ironically, failure is one of the primary ways in which humans learn. And the more you learn, the more successful you can be.
6. Not believing that you can succeed. If we don’t think we can succeed, we won’t waste our time trying. Unfortunately, we’re not very good at predicting how well we can perform over the long term.
   • This one is tricky, because you don’t know what you don’t know. The only reasonable course of action is to give it your best shot.
7. Giving up too soon. Persistence is one of the most powerful traits to have at your disposal. With small and consistent improvements, nearly any objective is achievable. Most people give up too soon to be successful.
8. Wanting to avoid the spotlight. Significant success draws attention, and many of us prefer the comfort of obscurity.
   • If this reason is stopping you, realize that much of this concern only exists in your head. A few people might admire your success. A few people might be annoyed with your success. However, there are already people that admire you and people that are annoyed with you.

We all hate failure, but failure is educational. What’s most important is to keep trying and to understand why you failed.

A little more commitment and perseverance are often all you require to be much more successful than you’ve demonstrated in the past. Determine the most common cause of your past failures and vow to yourself that you’ll never fail again for that reason.

If you can eliminate all of these common causes of failure, you’ll be nearly unstoppable. Fail aggressively, but never fail to learn from your failures.