Success is not final, failure is not fatal: I love this quote, right from the first day that I read it. It paints the journey of success and failure in a continuous picture. We often worry that success and failures are individual events. It makes them too precious. The moment we fail, it makes us feel that the weight of the entire world is on our shoulders. At this stage, our only hope is to feel sad about ourselves and suffer. It doesn’t lead us to use this feeling to move elsewhere.
But this quote from Winston Churchill gives us a new perspective. It enables us to think about success and failure as a continuous journey rather than an isolated event. Our lives are long, they give us opportunities to make mistakes and grow from them. The only times that we lose are when we stop trying or lose our spirit. The key message in this quote about success not being final is about finding motivation to keep going. In other words, our perseverance and commitment to goals go a long way in defining success for us. If success was final, then life would come to an end because we have nothing more to look forward to.
It is the same truth for failure too. If failure is fatal, then there’s nowhere to go from there. i.e. you die if you fail. Isn’t that a horrible message to pass on to people? In our lives, we will face many successes and failures. But these events are not bigger than life itself. Life is big and it can incorporate many successes and failures. The best thing about us is who we are. It is not just about the success and failure that we achieve.
Table of Contents
Success is not Final Meaning
The central meaning of this quote success is not final and failure is not fatal is in understanding that these are not events. Instead, success and failure are deeply connected to our values in life. The way we lead our lives influences what success means. It is not a question of whether we achieve our goals or not. You will encounter many people who might achieve the goals that you want. They may be lucky or may even cheat. But it is not the results alone that matter. The whole point about going after success is to identify the type of person you become in the process.
If you become a person that you can’t respect and yet achieve success, it can easily be deemed as a failure. Any success in which you lose yourself and go astray from your values will only disappoint you. It might give you short-term joy and a feel-good factor. But that’s not success. Success is the long-term person that you become. Hence the words – success is not final.
Nothing is final in this journey of life. The endpoint is when we die! That’s it! Until then, it is a continuous journey and we keep moving from one point to another. The beauty however is that we can define the direction in which we move. Not only this, we can also decide how we want to go after these paths in our lives. Let’s not fall into this trap of defining success and failure as 2-dimensional events. They are more complex and have a deeper influence on our lives.
Failure is not fatal
The flip side of success has failure next to it. No one likes failure – but it is more important to define how you fail rather than just failing. If we fixate on just the results, failure will be the worst thing to happen in our life. Once we fail, we have no other place to go making it the most difficult place on earth. If we define it this way, then we undermine the enormity of life and the depth of experiences that we feel through its journey.
Failure is not fatal because it is not a single event. It is multiple events put together that form a narrative. The main point about failure is that it provides us feedback about how to proceed next. Sometimes it is very powerful to get hurt because it helps us redirect our energies. Amidst the hurt, it also tells us how to process it, use it to move ahead in life.
The moment we look beyond one failure, we begin to learn the key life lessons. The stories of failure are important because they teach us how to move towards success. They help us learn to come out of helpless situations and create a path forward. Dealing with success is great, but learning how to deal with failure creates a life for us. If we look around us, we can see people who have seen both success and failure. No one gets to experience only one set of things. The most important aspect of this quote from Winston Churchill is about how we deal with these ephemeral events called success and failure.
It is the courage that counts – Winston Churchill
Once we fail, we start thinking about all our past mistakes and failures. It makes us question our abilities and doubt whether we can succeed the next time. But every failure or success is independent. It doesn’t matter what has happened in the past.
You don’t have to carry all the emotional baggage associated with it. It is our mistake if we allow it to act as baggage and make it all about it. That’s not going to help you succeed in the future. You must treat each failure as feedback to find the courage to fight and keep continuing. The same applies to success as well.
Although it’s easier to start from success, you still have to put in the effort and start as if it were day one to move from there. Sure you might have additional motivation when you succeed compared to a failure. But don’t discount the amount of motivation failure brings as well. Find the courage to continue, whether it is success or failure. It is only this courage that counts because every failure or every success is not final or fatal.
Success is going from failure to failure without the loss of motivation
Ultimately this is what the quote is all about. We must keep our fears and worries aside if we want to succeed. The fears will keep making us doubt ourselves. It will force you to question your abilities and worth. But all these are doubts – that’s their job. But your job is to find that motivation and hold on to it. Unless you do that, it becomes very difficult to succeed and keep fighting.
Perseverance is a critical element of success. Perseverance comes from moving from one success or failure to another. The trick is to keep continuing and working through these hardships. There’s hardly any time to waste and succumb to the vagaries of success and failure. These will always be trying to distract us.
Your best chance of winning is by maintaining your motivation. This acts as the strongest supporting unit to help you through this journey. Hence the quote – success is going from one failure to another without the loss of motivation.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14033.Winston_S_Churchill
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Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. It’s very true and I am sure that this has provided strength to generations to pick up their pieces and start again. I am sure though, how many souls calmed down on their ego after they tasted success!
Don’t you feel that success needs to be redefined and so does failure! Because it’s not the destination that defines success.
Imagine travelling from Bangalore to New Delhi by Indian Railways and the train leaves on time and arrives at New Delhi before the scheduled time. But you had noisy and nasty co passengers, the food was awfully tasteless, the air-conditioner worked only at times and there were mosquitoes to name a few. Would you term this as a successful journey?
Alternatively you could have a wonderful time with the passengers, making new friends but arriving a few hours late and reaching the meeting a bit late. Would you term this journey as a failure?
Life is a journey with beds at either ends. We win some and we lose some and that is statistically proven. …. Everyone need to relish it and give their 100% along the way without being bothered too much by the outcome.
A very sensible point Suman. I will try and respond in line to your comment to try and do better justice to it:
– Success needs to be redefined and so does failure
Fair point, I think our capability for success and failure keeps changing as we grow each day. The goal gets clearer as we reach closer. Sometimes we end up changing this goal and sometimes, it is taken over by a better one. It is almost as if both success and failure are ephemeral. Their presence is only at a certain point in time and if we are mature enough to treat these as incidents, we can look at creating further changes in them. I believe the most important point is to keep growing from every incident and expanding our capabilities. Without change or redefinition of these elements, success or failures mean very little as constant entities.
Perception of success and failure
– I like your elucidation through the example of a journey to bangalore from Delhi. The idea of success or failure is very much dependent on our feeling at that point in time. Although in this scenario, the end goal was to reach from a source to a destination, there is a significant impact of the type of journey we take and the emotions we go through with them. Perhaps in this example, there is a sense of success and failure in the feeling and the emotions we have through the process. It takes the focus from an objective definition of success or failure into a creative framework which can bring a lot of life into each of these experiences.
And yes, we need to relish each part of this journey or else the entire journey makes no sense. It is our own personal story to tell in the rich saga of our lives. If we can try and live each moment to the fullest, then the reward is the beautiful journey in itself.
Thank you for your thoughts, truly liberating.
Wonderful elucidation
Thank you Srinivas, this quote is one of my very favourite, it helps look at success and failure in a holistic manner
Beautiful post.
Thanks Pranita, it is always nice to be appreciated. I have a huge liking towards Winston Churchill’s collection of quotes. They have a sense of urge and rush to them. Would love to hear your thoughts on success, failure, perseverance and how they all tie together for you.