Rebounding From Failure Quotes

Great athletes practice, train, study, and develop. So do great learners. As students empowering ourselves with knowledge, what can we learn from Olympic-caliber athletes about success, and how to achieve it?
1.Preparation = Success!
"If you fail to prepare, you're prepared to fail." - Mark Spitz, Gold Medalist, Swimming
2.Learning is lifelong
"Never put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, Gold Medalist, Swimming
3.Failure is opportunity
"One shouldn't be afraid to lose" - Oksana Baiul, Gold Medalist, Figure Skating
4.The only person who can stop you is yourself
"This ability to conquer oneself is no doubt the most precious of all things sports bestows." - Olga Korbut, Gold Medalist, Gymnastics
5.Learning is fun!
"If you're not having fun, then what the hell are you doing?" - Allison Jones, six-time Paralympian
6.You have to be in it to win it
"Failure I can live with. Not trying is what I can't handle." - Sanya Richards-Ross, Gold Medalist, Track & Field
There are always new skills to learn, new challenges to overcome, new ways to succeed. The only guarantee of failure is if you don't get started in the first place. ~ Udacity

My wakeup call wasn't some light switch of empowerment. From as early as preschool I feared that if I didn't grow up to be the pretty princess men fawned over, I was a failure. That mentality was my disease. It got me raped. It made me feel dirty and devalued because my cherry wasn't popped on a bed of rose petals. It fueled an adolescence juggling starvation and vomiting until my throat bled out and my stomach acid burned through the plumbing. It made me snort coke, smoke meth, and routinely gulp down narcotic petri dishes in hopes of obtaining hallucinogenic intimacy with junkie boyfriends. But most of all, it made me waste my youth chasing, obsessing over, fighting for, worshipping, clinging to, and crying over one after another loser. At some point, I just quit giving a fuck. ~ Maggie Young

Every person, young and old, has had his own personal experience with falling. Falling is what we mortals do. But as long as we are willing to rise up again and continue on the path toward the spiritual goals God has given us, we can learn something from failure and become better and happier as a result. My dear friends, no matter how many times you have slipped or fallen, rise up! Your destiny is a glorious one! Stand tall and walk in the light of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ! You are stronger than you realize. You are more capable than you can imagine. You can do it now! ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

He could no longer deny that for the rest of his life, he would measure every other woman against her, and find them all lacking. Her smile, her sharp tongue, her temper, her infectious laugh, her body and spirit, everything about her struck a pleasurable chord in him. She was independent, willful, stubborn… qualities that most men did not desire in a wife. The fact that he did was as undeniable as it was unexpected.
There were only two ways to manage the situation. He could either continue trying to avoid her, which had been a spectacular failure so far, or he could simply give in. Give in… knowing that she would never be the placid, proper wife he had always envisioned having. In marrying her, he would defy a fate that had been scripted for him before he had even been born.
He would never be entirely certain what to expect from Lillian. She would behave in ways that he would not always understand, and she would bite back like a half-tamed creature whenever he tried to control her. She was a creature possessed of strong emotions and an even stronger will. They would quarrel. She would never allow him to become too comfortable, too settled.
Dear God, was that truly the future he wanted?
Yes. Yes. Yes.

-Marcus' thoughts ~ Lisa Kleypas

Learn from your failure's; do not prevent misfortune from teaching you. ~ Mandy Hale

LEADING LESSONS
It's the failures that make us winners.

When you win a competition, you celebrate. You are on cloud nine. But when you lose, you learn. In my case, losing Blackpool that first time was the best thing that ever happened to me. I dug deep down and asked myself what it was that was holding me back from achieving what I knew I was capable of. Failure shows you what's possible. It makes your desire burn hotter. It builds courage, and in the end, it makes the win that much sweeter. I would rather fail at something than regret never trying. Leaders think of failures as experiments, showing them what works and what doesn't and how to fix things. We live in a world where failure is thought of as something negative: no one likes the idea of screwing up. But what if you could change that? What if you could see failure as a positive? What if you could embrace failure as part of the process necessary to get what you want? Suddenly, the fear of it disappears. I never went into any competition wanting to fail (just the opposite), but after racking up my share of disappointments, I learned that I could deal with it. It hurt and pissed me off at the time, but now I see the value in it. I wouldn't be where I am today without those failures notched on my belt. ~ Derek Hough

We choose owning our stories of struggle, Over hiding, over hustling, over pretending. When we deny our stories, they define us. When we run from struggle, we are never free. So we turn toward truth and look it in the eye. We will not be characters in our stories. Not villains, not victims, not even heroes. We are the authors of our lives. We write our own daring endings. We craft love from heartbreak, Compassion from shame, Grace from disappointment, Courage from failure. Showing up is our power. Story is our way home. Truth is our song. We are the brave and brokenhearted. ~ Brene Brown

For the first time, I understood the ancients' need to find explanations for why things happen. It's a quintessential human imperative. Random is not emotionally satisfying. Therefore, lightning was the bolt from an angry god. Crop failure was punishment for failing to honor the gods with a fatted calf. The plague happened because you took the Lord's name in vain or coveted your neighbor's wife. Going to church regularly and praying could forestall illness. And on and on. ~ Alanna Mitchell

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery ~ Samuel Smiles

Failure is your friend. It is the raw material of success. Invite it in. Learn from it. And don't let it leave until you pick its pocket. That's a system. ~ Anonymous

Fritz."
The butler rushed over from the crudité arrangement he was working on. "Yes, master! I am eager to be of aid."
"Take this." iAm peeled the cat off himself, prying both of its front claws out of his fleece. "And do whatever it is you do with it."
As he turned away, he felt like glancing back and making sure G*dd*mn was okay.
But why the fuck would he do that?
He had to get to Sal's and check on his staff. Usually he hit the restaurant in the early afternoon, but shit had not been "usual," what with that migraine: Every time his brother had one, they both got a headache. Now, though, with Trez rebounding and no doubt soon to be on the grind with that Chosen, it was time to get back on his own track. If only to keep himself from going psychotic.
Jesus Christ, Trez was now going to fuck that female. And God only knew where that was going to land them all.
Just as he hit the exit, he called out over his shoulder, "Fritz."
Through the din of First Meal prep, the doggen answered back, "Yes, master?"
"I never find any seafood in this place. Why is that?"
"The King does not favor any manner of fin."
"Would he allow it in here?"
"Oh, yes, master. Just not upon his table, and certainly never upon his plate."
iAm stared at the panels of the door in front of him. "I want you to get some fresh salmon and poach it. Tonight."
"But of course. I will not have it ready afore First Meal for you - "
~ J.R. Ward

As I write this, I am still waiting for Steve to walk through the door. His sarong still hangs on the bed. His toothbrush is in the bathroom.
Reality is sinking in more and more. Bindi and I have a lot of heart-to-heart talks. These seem to help her, just like when she was younger and lost a special koala named Wilson. Wilson died of renal failure and is buried in our backyard. I felt thankful that over the years, I had set the foundation of faith with Bindi.
"As hard as it is to understand, there was a reason for all of this," I told her. "One day it will be clear."
Robert is like a pitiful puppy, and he still waits patiently for his daddy to come home from heaven. I hadn't been prepared for how devastated Robert would be. Some nights he sits in the bathtub and cries. "I want my daddy," he says, over and over. It absolutely tears my heart out. ~ Terri Irwin

Socialism's failure in the former Soviet Union and in the other socialist countries stands as a clean and unquestionable warning as to which path any rational and sane people should never follow again. Government planning brought poverty and ruin ... Unfortunately, America is not absorbing the lessons that should be learned from the socialist experience and, instead, is following the same path of destruction. ~ Richard Ebeling

Sociological Explanations

Sociologists theorize that people can live together in peace because of the development of a social hierarchy that ranges from dominant to submissive. Everyone in a group takes his or her place in the hierarchy. A certain degree of anxiety around others allows people to assess the level of threat that they pose, and helps maintain the balance between aggression and inhibition.
However, people with social anxiety tend to misinterpret others' behavior as more aggressive or powerful than it really is. As a result, a socially anxious person often will become overly submissive--blushing, not making eye contact, freezing, or withdrawing.
Sociologists believe this response may be the result of a fundamental fear of rejection. In monkeys, apes, and humans, being left to fend for oneself usually is a threat to survival. In social anxiety, people may see being judged as a threat to their position in the group. To them, rejection means failure.

Kyoto went through her day at school constantly apologizing to everyone. Whenever she walked down the hall, opened her locker, sat down in an empty seat, or got in line in the cafeteria, she always said "Excuse me" or "I'm sorry." Most of the time, she didn't know why she was apologizing. She always wanted to please others.
Kyoto's mother took her to see a psychologist because of Kyoto's anxiety. The psychologist helped Kyoto see that she misinterpreted others' behavior as being more ~ Heather Moehn

To me, the failure of liberalism - the tradition I come from - was not recognizing there has to be justice across the generations. ~ Richard Lamm

Failure is a great teacher, and I think when you make mistakes and you recover from them and you treat them as valuable learning experiences, then you've got something to share. ~ Steve Harvey

Many great people have experienced some kind of failure. They build on the lessons from failing to become great. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Most men fail, not through lack of education, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will. ~ Orison Swett Marden

Author Martha Beck says of the ego, "Don't leave home without it." But do not let your ego totally run the show, or it will shut down the show. Your ego is a wonderful servant, but it's a terrible master - because the only thing your ego ever wants is reward, reward, and more reward. And since there's never enough reward to satisfy, your ego will always be disappointed. Left unmanaged, that kind of disappointment will rot you from the inside out. An unchecked ego is what the Buddhists call "a hungry ghost" - forever famished, eternally howling with need and greed. Some version of that hunger dwells within all of us. We all have that lunatic presence, living deep within our guts, that refuses to ever be satisfied with anything. I have it, you have it, we all have it. My saving grace is this, though: I know that I am not only an ego; I am also a soul. And I know that my soul doesn't care a whit about reward or failure. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Although their parents died in the wilderness for their stubbornness, Israel could profit from the older generation's failure by remembering that God had used adversity to train them. ~ Max Anders

It's not about the failure, it's about learning from the failures. Failure itself cannot be celebrated. ~ Satya Nadella

Consider the core of the mind to be a wagon, with will-power to be carried about in it. Push it to a place where there can be failure, and there will be failure. Push it to a place where there can be success, and there will be success. But whether there is success or failure, if one entrusts himself to the straightness of this wagon of the core of the mind, he will attain right-mindedness in either case. Severing oneself from desire and being like a rock or tree, nothing will ever be achieved. Not departing from desire, but realizing a desireless right-mindedness - this is the Way. ~ Takuan Soho

PARANOID PERSONALITY The paranoid defense is a posture developed to cope with excessive shame. The paranoid person becomes hypervigilant, expecting and waiting for the betrayal and humiliation he knows is coming. The paranoid person interprets innocent events as personally threatening and constantly lives on guard. Harry Stack Sullivan described the paranoid as "feeling hopelessly defective." The sources of the paranoid's own sense of deficiency are found elsewhere. It's as if the inner eyes of shaming, contempt and disdain are projected outward. Wrongdoings, mistakes and other instances of personal failure cannot be owned by the paranoid-type personality. They are disowned and transferred from the inner self to others. ~ John Bradshaw

While recovering from failure, the bitter find comfort, not in the phrase 'This too shall pass', but in their hope that 'They too shall fail'. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I have learned to not let a bad race or failure bring me down, and always walking away with something positive and learning from mistakes so I can be better or stronger next time. ~ Erin Hamlin

Once upon a time, there was a prince. From a young age, he knew he was destined for greatness for he knew that one day, he would inherit the kingdom from his father. But the prince also had a secret. He was scared of failure. Terrified of it. So completely frightened of not being as good a king as his father, that he would stay up every night braced with the fear of mediocrity.

And so, the prince took a medicine to calm his anxiety and he slew trolls! And he took more, and he slew dragons! But one day, he took too much and nearly lost everything. So he was banished. The kingdom would not have him. He was the talk of the countryside, an embarrassment to his family and more important, a disappointment to the king.

But the prince would concoct a plan. He would venture back to the land of the queen. There, he would reclaim greatness and thereby gain entrance to the kingdom. And all was going well until of course, this little shit came along. ~ Ngozi Ukazu

The disaffection, neurosis, anguish and frustration encountered by psychoanalysis comes no doubt from being unable to love or to be loved, from being unable to give or take pleasure, but the radical disenchatment comes from seduction and its failure. Only those who lie completely outside seduction are ill, even if they remain fully capable of loving and making love. Psychoanalysis believes it treats the disorder of sex and desire, but in reality it is dealing with the disorders of seduction ... The most serious deficiences always concern charm and not pleasure, enchantment and not some vital or sexual satisfaction. ~ Jean Baudrillard

Mohammed was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength. ~ Karen Armstrong

It won't do to be afraid of failure. Failure is the mother of success; a long journey begins from the ground beneath his feet. ~ Gen Urobuchi

There are no mistakes, save one: the failure to learn from a mistake. ~ Robert Fripp

My greatest sense of accomplishment has come from having two amazing sons, but it's also a paradox in that the times when I felt like the biggest failure have been times when I felt like, as a parent, I wasn't making the right decisions or succeeding in the way that I should. ~ Michael Franti

I saw Dad's eyes widen just a fraction when he heard my voice catch. He glanced at me but quickly turned away. He didn't want me to see his reaction, but I did, and I'll never forget it. In that brief glimpse, I could see what he was thinking behind that fixed stare. There would be no grandkids, there would be no more Creed family bloodline, nothing else to look forward to. From that point on I'd become the last, most devastating disappointment in what he thought his life had added up to
one overwhelming failure. ~ Perry Moore

Beggar: There was a time when we didn't exist, Oedipus. That means that even the deepest desires of our heart, our blood, our moments of awakening have sprung from nothing. Even your desire to escape destiny is perhaps destiny. It isn't we who made our own blood. It's enough to feel it and live like free man, as the oracle bids us.
Oedipus: Yes, so long as a man is still searching. You had the luck never to reach your goal. But the day comes when you go back to Cithaeron, you forget everything and the mountain seems to bring back your childhood. You look at it day after day and maybe you climb it. Then someone tells you that you were born up there. And everything crumbles. ~ Cesare Pavese

Recovering from failure is often easier than building from success. ~ Michael Eisner

My Sadness is Deeper than Yours

My sadness is deeper than yours. My interior life is richer than yours. I am more interesting than you. I don't care about anybody else's problems. They are not as serious as mine. Nobody knows the weight I carry, the trouble I've seen. There are worlds in my head that nobody has access to: fortunately for them, fortunately for me. I have seen things that you will never see, and I have feelings that you are incapable of feeling, that you would never allow yourself to feel, because you lack the capacity and the curiosity. Once you felt the hint of such a feeling, you would stamp it out. I am a martyr to futility and I don't expect to be shut down by a pretender. Mothballs are an aphrodisiac to me, beauty depresses me. You could never hope to fathom the depth of my feelings, deeper than death. I look down upon you all from my lofty height of lowliness. The fullness of your satisfaction lacks the cadaverous purity of my pain. Don't talk to me about failure. You don't know the meaning of the word. When it comes to failure, you're strictly an amateur. Bush league stuff. I'm ten times the failure you'll ever be. I have more to complain about than you, and regrets: more than a few, too many to mention. I am a fully-qualified failure, I have proven it over and over again. My credentials are impeccable, my resume flawless. I have worked hard to put myself in a position of unassailable wretchedness, and I demand to be respected for it. I expec ~ John Tottenham

Every great cause is born from repeated failures and from imperfect achievements. ~ Maria Montessori

If we never experienced the the valuable lessons from failure, then we would never truly appreciate the pure joy of our success. ~ Lindsey Rietzsch

The elements of trial and error, similar to earth and sky, and fire and water, delineates the constituent modules of our lives. Living robustly includes more failures than successes. We achieve adeptness to living by exhibiting a willingness to make good faith mistakes and learn from each misadventure. Every effort that fails to achieve our expected result is understandably frustrating. The fact is that without ideas and dreams and devoid of occasional crash landings, a person can never hope to achieve any worthy acts to temper resounding personal disappointment. Meaningful success is ultimately defined when a person dies, when an entire life's work devoted to performing passionate and compassionate enterprises can be judge as a whole unit. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Something in her was changing as she read the books. Life after life flashed before her eyes, yet she stayed safe from misery. And the urge to act things out onstage could be satisfied cheaply, and at home, and without the annoyance of other members of an acting company. Her ambition to leave faded and a kind of contentment set in. She hadn't exactly feared the word contentment, but had always associated it with a vague sense of failure. To be discontented had always seemed much richer a thing. To be restless, striving. That view was romantic. In truth, she was finding out, life was better lived in a tranquil pattern. As long as she could read, she never tired of the design of her days. ~ Louise Erdrich

The Mommy Mystique tells us that we are the luckiest women in the world
the freest, with the most choices, the broadest horizons, the best luck, and the most wealth. It says we have the knowledge and know-how to make "informed decisions" that will guarantee the successful course of our children's lives. It tells us that if we choose badly our children will fall prey to countless dangers
from insecure attachment to drugs to kidnapping to a third-rate college. And if this happens, if our children stray from the path toward happiness and success, we will have no one but ourselves to blame. Because to point fingers out at society, to look beyond ourselves, is to shirk "personal responsibility." To admit that we cannot do everything ourselves, that indeed we need help
and help on a large, systematic scale
is tantamount to admitting personal failure. ~ Judith Warner

We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. ~ Paul Keating

Failure is just a few seconds away from success. ~ John Flanagan

Failure analysis is as easy as Monday-morning quarterbacking' design is more akin to coaching. However, the design engineer must do better than any coach, for he is expected to win every game he plays. That is a tough assignment when one mistake can often mean a loss. And when defeat occurs, all one can hope is to analyze the game films and learn from the mistakes so that they are less likely to be repeated the next time out. ~ Henry Petroski

As I paddle along, I slowly become aware that it's been fear keeping me out of this pool for so many years. I never came here before because I was afraid I'd make a fool of myself by not having the endurance to complete a lap. The swimming wasn't what scared me; failure was. My fear locked me in a state of arrested development for so many years. Fear kept me from tackling my weight, which I understand has simply been symptomatic of my greater fear, growing up. I glide down the lane on my back and reflect on how good I feel right now. It's not because I've lost more than thirty pounds. I feel incredible because I've stopped being afraid. ~ Jen Lancaster