This post was most recently updated on September 25th, 2018

Why do we fail in life multiple times?

I was desperately looking for the answer since long.

There is a trend these days to celebrate failure stories. Everyone is celebrating their failures. This is good change of course, that we not only study other’s success but failures too.

But while celebrating our failures, we should not forget to learn from them.

I read an article in one of the famous personal development website that you cannot avoid failure at any cost. But I still had a doubt. I wondered what if there was someone who would always succeed? Why not?

Hence, I sat down with my grandfather to guide me through life’s puzzle. I was confused a lot. I wanted to know the surefire way to avoid failure and succeed at anything.

Hence, I asked him, “Grandpa, tell me how can I succeed at everything I do?”

He smiled and said, “The answer is simple.”

That one sentence was enough to encourage me.

He said, “It depends on how you look at yourself and your actions. Let me explain you.”

People fail only because of three reasons. Wherever you see a failure, it’s because of one of the three reasons listed below.

If you don’t try.

Most of the people give up even before they begin.

They have a list of excuses why they can’t do something. It’s easy to recognize them.

They are always complaining, dragging down those who are going ahead and talking negative whole day.

You can easily see that they will talk big but do less and they haven’t achieved much in life.

READ What I learned by taking the road less travelled.

What does that mean for you?

You have to at least try before you can get the results. But the main point is that you have to try.

The only way to avoid this type of failure is you have to take that first step. Unless you do that, you’ll be always a failure.

If you keep trying no matter what, you are successful because real success is not to avoid failure but keep going in-spite of failure.

Don’t judge before you begin, don’t assume before you start and don’t expect before you act.

If you don’t improve.

Japanese have developed a concept called Kaizen, known as continuous improvement. It’s a unique approach to work that says that today should be better than yesterday and tomorrow should be better than today.

Big changes doesn’t happen in an instant. They happen with continuous improvement over a long period of time.

Jeff Bezos didn’t become the world’d richest person overnight. He founded Amazon in 1994 but became the world’s richest person in 2018, after 24 years of continuous improvement.

No matter how much you succeeded in past, you have to improve continuously to make up with the latest trend and technologies to survive the market demand.

Often, people who don’t improve fail and one of the biggest example we have in front of us is Nokia. Nokia used to sell handsets suitable for every age groups and for every budget. But today, we are hardly able to see Nokia handsets because it failed to improve itself.

You are a failure only if you don’t improve.

READ Want to elevate your level of success? Apply rule of 33.

If you quit.

Elon Musk didn’t quit after the failure of his first spaceship, Jack Ma didn’t give up after being rejected by KFC and Harvard, Steve Jobs didn’t give up after he was removed from Apple.

What do all these success stories tell us?

You only fail if you quit. Period.

There may be times when you are defeated and frustrated. Don’t quit at that time. Remember all the achievers from the history who didn’t gave up when they had a choice.

You only fail if you quit.