Failure is a gift. I am not referring to failure where you didn’t try, didn’t care, or gave up. I am talking about when you gave it your best but didn’t quite achieve what you were after.
Most people don’t see failure as a gift because it can be embarrassing, disappointing, frustrating, and so it is avoided at all costs. The problem with avoiding failure is that you also avoid everything that comes with it. You avoid learning, new people and experiences, and never learn what you are actually capable of. I am not saying I want to fail, but some gifts come with that experience that you cannot get any other way.

The gift of learning
Nobody picks up a violin and plays in an orchestra the next day. To learn the instrument it requires practice and many, many mistakes, even before a song can be strung together. To avoid the mistakes is to avoid learning the instrument. When you embrace the failures, you open yourself up to the learning experience.

The gift of feedback
Each fail is feedback that provides you with direction to do better. If you fail your driving test there are areas you need practice in. If you fail at your job promotion, there is somewhere you need to upskill. Rather than ignore the fail and continue doing the wrong thing, take the gift of feedback and do something different.  

The gift of coping
Failing helps you to develop coping skills. You learn how to sit with feelings of disappointment, frustration, embarrassment, or sadness. You learn how to work through the feelings and learn they don’t last forever. Michael Rutter, a resilience expert, called these “steeling events”. Low-level challenges help to strengthen us and teach us to cope with harder things.

The gift of perseverance
Sometimes you get what you want on the first go, but other times it is the 2nd, 3rd...or 5,127th (if you are Sir James Dyson). When you see failure as normal, you are less likely to give up and more likely to keep trying. Nobody wrote a bestseller on the first draft. Start to see the mistakes as part of learning and growing, and then you will keep growing and become the best version of you.
Studies show that young people who are protected from failure are more depressed and less satisfied with life in adulthood. While it might seem helpful – removing the failure also takes away all the gifts. Go ahead and protect them from harmful experiences, but allow them to try things and learn when things don’t go their way.