Failure and Success:a Primer

The terms failure and success are extremely binary and give the world a black and white perspective. There's only success, or its opposite - failure, right? Maybe, but maybe not.
Think about taking an exam. Come test day you're excited because you studied hard and you're ready to try your hardest to get that A you've been dreaming of. Let's explore the idea of you failing. Should you be upset that you failed? Maybe, but you gave it your all. You failed in arguably the best way possible.

Let's take the example of you failing, again. This time you didn't study, and you did even worse than in the case above. You're going to be upset that you failed, but let's be honest, we both know that you were unprepared. You didn't challenge yourself and you didn't aim to be your best. Even if you had passed the exam, you still failed yourself.

Let's look at that example now; you passed, but you got lucky and didn't study. Sure you can give yourself an imaginary pat on the back or brag to your friends, "I got an A and I didn't even open the book!" but when it comes time to apply that knowledge, you'll be sorry that you didn't study. If there's a cumulative final, then you're going to have to spend extra nights completely relearning that material because you might not be so lucky next time.

This last example is obviously the favorite. You passed and you worked damn hard to do it. You're proud, you're happy, you did it! All of those hours cramming made it so worthwhile and now you've got this rockin' GPA along with the material (somewhat) fresh in your memory. Come finals time you'll be able to knock it out of the park.

Now, in these examples, this is the most common ranking list:

1. Tried your hardest, passed.
2. Didn't try, passed.
3. Tried your hardest, failed.
4. Didn't try, failed.

But that's because the "didn't try" option can still theoretically yield passing results in that example. Let's take another example, asking somone out. The listing changes to:

1. Asked him/her out (tried), got number
2. Asked him/her out (tried), got rejected
3. Didn't ask him/her out (didn't try), live with regret

In the test example, trying leaves you with either with the best outcome, or the 3rd best.

In the asking out example, trying leaves you with either the best or 2nd best outcome.

In almost any example, not trying is going to leave you with possibly the worst outcome.

Therefore you shouldn't focus on succeeding or failing, but trying. You should always aim to do your best possible and outdo your former self. If you're constantly outdoing yourself then eventually you won't even have to worry about failing, you'll only have to worry about not being better than who you once were.