Try. Fail. Learn. Repeat. Succeed

Intro

Try and try till you succeed, is a very old saying. But works even today. In hindi we say, "Koshish karne waalon ki kabhi haar nahi hoti." Oh well, that's a beautiful line. We all know Thomas Edison's saying, "I have not found 1 way to create the light bulb, but 9999 ways of how not to create the light bulb." In innovation, there's going to be trial and error. In fact, it's not an error if you learn from it and make things better. I love the idea of trying and trying and trying till we succeed. There's a book called Grit which talks about the fact that it is the effort that counts. The hardwork, the deliberate practice that counts. I love that idea as well. So today, I am going to talk about why is it important to keep on trying and trying until you succeed. Second I am going to talk about some practical ways of trying and trying till we succeed. 

Why is try and try till you succeed important

Before we go on to something very theoretical. Let me tell you as babies, we all had this idea of try and try till we succeed. We just didn't know that there was something that we were doing, and we had the idea of trying and trying till we succeed. As babies we had a clear head. We first started crawling, then walking. However, many times we failed to walk, however many times we failed to crawl, we decided to get back up and try again and that's how we learned walking. That's how we learned jumping. That's how we learned running. It's through walking we learned how to run. It's through running we learned how to jump. So go ahead and do those things in life that are important to you right now. It was never about the good days or the bad days. It was always about trying. Sometimes you will fail, sometimes you will succeed. Do you remember learning to play cricket? You tried and kept trying to hit the ball. Yes, there would be some balls you would miss. But you kept on playing the game because it was fun. My point here is trying is supposed to be fun. Trying is supposed to be great. Because in reality that's all there is. 

Try. Try again. Try once more. Try differently. Try again tomorrow. Try and ask for help. Try and find someone who's done it. Try to fix the problem. Keep trying until you succeed. It’s a simple mantra, yet it carries so much truth. Imagine you're learning to code. You open your laptop, full of energy and ambition. You write your first lines of code, only to be met with an error. It doesn't work the way you hoped. Still, you don’t give up. You try again. You rewrite the code, follow a tutorial, maybe even copy a snippet from the internet — but it still doesn’t run the way it should. Frustration sets in. Maybe you step away for a while. You sleep on it, and the next day, with a fresh mind, you try again.

This time, you decide to ask for help. You reach out , maybe to a friend, a mentor, a forum, or a stranger on Stack Overflow. Suddenly, you’re not alone. You realize there’s an entire community of learners and experts who’ve been where you are. You learn from someone who’s done it before. You watch how they debug, how they break down the problem, how calmly they approach what once felt like chaos. You absorb their mindset, not just their knowledge.

You try again, now with a better understanding. You start to notice things, the structure of the code, the logic behind the syntax, the small details that make a big difference. You begin to appreciate that learning to code isn’t about instant success. It’s about building the resilience to keep going when things don’t work. You realize that failure is not a wall; it’s a stepping stone. You start reading documentation not as a chore, but as a puzzle. You celebrate the little wins, fixing a bug, solving a logic error, understanding how one concept connects to another.

Bit by bit, things start to make sense. You write something, and this time, it runs. You smile, not because it was easy, but because you didn’t quit. You’ve grown. You’ve built a mindset. Because in the end, success in coding, and in life, is not about never falling. It’s about how many times you get back up. It’s about how often you’re willing to try.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. This time let's take an example of learning how to sail. Learning to sail is a lot like learning how to live, full of wind, waves, and the unexpected. You step onto the boat for the first time, excited and maybe a little nervous. The water stretches out endlessly before you, and for a moment, you feel unstoppable. You pull the ropes, grip the tiller, adjust the sails, and nothing works quite like you imagined. The boat drifts the wrong way, or worse, spins in circles. You feel clumsy, awkward, even a little foolish.

You’ve tried, and you’ve failed.

You come back the next day, a little sore but determined. You try again. The wind pushes back. The water doesn’t care how much effort you’re putting in. You forget what you learned, your hands slip, the boat tips just enough to scare you, but you’re still afloat.

You fail again.

But this time, you fail better.

You begin to notice the wind, not just feel it, but understand it. You learn how the sail catches it, how a small adjustment can change your direction. You realize it’s not about brute strength, but about balance, timing, patience. You talk to someone who’s been sailing for years. They share stories, tips, a few laughs about their own early wipeouts.

I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed. It’s easy to look at someone successful and assume they had it all figured out that their journey was smooth, their talent was natural, and their path was paved with wins. But success doesn’t look like that. It’s not a straight line. It’s a messy, painful, beautiful climb, filled with stumbles, wrong turns, and yes, countless failures.

What Jordan out here says typically is that because he's failed over and over again, he's learned from every failure and moved forward in life. Sometimes you learn, sometimes you fail, but what's more important is to be there when someone falls in life. 

Failure forces you to look deeper, into your mindset, your habits, your why.

It’s easy to stay motivated when things are going well. But the real growth happens when you fail and still get back up. When you fall short, again and again, and still show up with the courage to try one more time. That's where greatness is born.

Michael Jordan missed over 9,000 shots. Lost nearly 300 games. Failed to make the game-winning shot 26 times. And yet, he’s known as one of the greatest athletes of all time, not in spite of those failures, but because of them.

Success isn’t just about talent. It’s about endurance. About learning to embrace failure, not fear it. About understanding that behind every win is a mountain of attempts, most of which didn’t work — but each one brought you closer.

Practical ways to keep on trying: 

1. Detach emotions from results: A lot of times when we are trying and failing at something, we start becoming extremely emotional about it. The good, the bad and the worst. But the idea is to detach your emotions from results. See failure objectively, not subjectively. Typically, when you fail at something, you have failed at a task and that does not make you a failure. 

2. Track Progress: Keep tracking your progress either using a journal or a habit tracker. When you see how far you've come, it will boost your belief to keep going. 

3. Find examples of someone who failed first: Read stories of people who kept trying. You can read about JK Rowling, Walt Disney, and Steve jobs. All of them failed first but still persisted. 

4. Reflect on every try: Ask yourself, "What did I try?", "What worked?", "What did not? " and "What can I do differently next time?". The question puts you in a state of solutions. 

5. Use the "2 minute rule": I’ll just try for 2 minutes.Often, you’ll end up doing much more. Getting started is usually the hardest part.

6. Set Micro Goals: I think, having small goals really helps. For example, you might have a huge goal of learning to code. Go ahead and just have a small goal of running a hello world program. Once that's done you will find more momentum. 

Bonus Tip: Attach trying to your identity. I'm the kind of person who keeps trying and never quits. Make this identity. Tell the world about this. Tell yourself about this 100 times and that's the way you build it into your identity.