Failure is as important as success, believe celebrities like former cricket captain Sourav Ganguly, author-producer Twinkle Khanna and badminton ace Pullela Gopichand, who gathered here at a panel discussion on Thursday.
The discussion was organised as part of Surf Excel’s #HaarkoHarao campaign aimed at changing the perspective on failure to a learning experience.
The celebrities unanimously said that failing in one match or one exam never limits a child for anything, and rather opens up many more possibilities. Therefore, failure is equally important to success because they go hand-in-hand and failure gives a chance to people to value success even more.
Twinkle spoke on how her failure as an actress opened up the opportunity of becoming a writer; while Gopichand and Ganguly emphasized on how the low phases of their career as sportsmen helped them to learn not only about the game they play, but also about how to fight back the low points of life.
Asked how to deal with the result after much hard work, especially with the depression that comes along if the result is not satisfactory, the two sportsmen had an interesting view.
Ganguly said: “We prepare ourselves for success, but the best way to deal with the outcome of any competitive situation is to prepare your mind for that. When you visualize what you want to achieve in your mind, your dream automatically translates into your performance. So nothing will come as a shock to you.”
Agreeing to this, Gopichand added: “But then, what you dream might not happen when exactly you want it to happen, but when the universe wants it to be. For instance, I trained myself for three months especially for Olympics and because I faced injury and a temperature of 102, I couldn’t get up for the final match.
“I didn’t know then why was I still getting those visuals of winning a medal. And then the All England Open Badminton Championships happened and I won. So I realized that if you really want something, it happens for sure but on its own time.”
