FAIL - Fight Again In Life: Dr Tanu Jain (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Dr Tanu Jain’s talk titled “FAIL – Fight Again In Life” at TEDxIIMAmritsar conference.

Dr. Tanu Jain’s inspirational talk titled “FAIL – Fight Again In Life” delves into the transformative power of embracing failure as an integral part of personal growth and success. She emphasizes that failure is a societal construct, where societal expectations often define success and failure, rather than individual achievement and personal satisfaction.

Dr. Jain shares seven key lessons learned from her own experiences with failure, advocating for a balanced approach to life that values emotional, professional, and personal fulfillment equally. She challenges the traditional narrative of failure, highlighting the importance of perseverance, learning from setbacks, and the unique paths of individual journeys toward success. Through examples of well-known personalities like Amitabh Bachchan, Steve Jobs, Einstein, and Edison, she illustrates how apparent failures can lead to unprecedented success.

Dr. Jain encourages her audience to analyze their failures, play to their strengths, and never let societal judgments define their worth. Ultimately, her talk is a call to action to “fight again in life,” using failure as a stepping stone to greater achievements and personal satisfaction.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

So, have I failed? Yes, of course, and many times, many, many times, sometimes on a daily basis. But my journey of failure is not that important; important are the lessons that I have taken from my failures. So, I will try to put before you my 7 lessons that I have learned. My first lesson is that failure is a social concept; generally, society tells you if you are a failure and a success, we all have faced this.

Understanding Failure

The moment you give an entrance exam, the moment you start a business, the moment you enter into a relationship, people tell you, “Oh, not this time, again she couldn’t clear the exam,” “Oh, he started a business, he failed,” “Oh goodness.” So, this is the kind of tag of failure that society puts on you. The problem is we ourselves don’t seem, we don’t consider ourselves failures, but society makes you a failure or a success; this is the problem.

The moment somebody is trying to put a tag on you, see through it; it’s not them who should decide whether you are a failure or a success, who should decide, only and only you should decide when you have been a failure and when you have been a success.

Failure in Different Aspects of Life

Nobody can tell you whether you are a failure or a success. Second, there is a horizontal aspect of our life and failures and success govern all of them. So, there are people who are academic failures, others are career failures, professional failures, and some others are emotional failures, and more are social failures, and above all is identity failure.

Identity failure is when you don’t know what you want to do and you act by the society set parameters: marriage at 25, career set at 27, child before 30, and first house before 35. All this is what society sets for you. So, the moment you go beyond any timeline you go beyond, they will term you a failure. But this horizontal aspect, even when not important for society, it is important for you. If you are failing as an emotional person and you are very successful as a profession, it’s still a failure.

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So, it is very important to have a balance because if you regret at the end that you are a very rich, successful person with nobody else to enjoy with, then it is again something you regret. And if you have very loving, good friends, a good family but no money, again it is a problem. Therefore, a balance in all aspects of life is important. So, here we are not talking only about career failures.

Vertical Aspect of Failure

It is very important that you look at your life holistically and organically. The third thing I have analyzed through my failures is that there is a vertical aspect to failure. So, imagine there is a mountain which is 500 meters and the person who quit at 50 meters is a failure, the person who quit at 100 meters is a failure, and 490 meters is still a failure for society. Only the person who reaches the epic, the peak, the summit is called a success.

But if this person who quit at 50 and the person who quit at 490, are they the same? They are not the same. Absolutely not the same. Because the kind of hard work that person has put in, the kind of learning that person has taken is very different. You cannot compare the failure of a person who has just entered and quit and the person who has strived, had done determination, had the determination to go through. You cannot compare these failures. Not all failures are the same. So, what is important?

Learning from Failure

Your pursuit. The person who has failed at 490 is a different person. He is an evolved being. He has learned a lot on the journey. He has the lessons, the wisdom, the knowledge, the skills which he or she can utilize in another venture.

This takes me to another of my points. That is, we should not, we should not consider ourselves as failure if we just do not reach the peak. The peak is just one point and as people say, when one door closes, many doors open. But truth be told, these doors are open only for prepared people.

So, the person who quit at 490, for him or her, these doors are open. Not for the person who quit at 50 because the learnings are different. This person who has learned along the way has other doors open for him or her. Take the example of Amitabh Bachchan. He was rejected as a radio jockey because of his husky voice.

And now that voice has become the major, you know, major attraction, the huskiness, the sincerity of that voice has become the major attraction. And of course, we all know he has failed many times and yet again succeeded.

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Analyzing Failures

So, the doors open only for those who keep learning and who keep their pursuit on. This leads to my fifth point. It is very important that we analyze our failures. Many times I have seen that because somebody tells you being a monkey is the next best thing in the market, we all try to become a monkey.

But if you are better at swimming, then be a fish because you have to play on your strength. The moment you move beyond your strength, the moment you try to become something which another person is telling you to, then you lose your strength and this becomes inevitable failure. Inevitable because you are not prepared for that. You are not loving that. You are not passionate about that.

So, if you are having failures in life, analyze. Is there something wrong with what you are trying to achieve? Is there something wrong in your direction? Analyze. I never say just be obsessive about one thing. But yes, one has to have determination and passion. At the same time, with analysis, whether the direction is right.

If you are a fish, be a fish. Be a good fish. Don’t be a bad monkey. Because when in society it will judge you, it will always say this is a bad monkey and that is a good fish.

Regret and Failure

So, always do what you are best at. After this, I will tell you my sixth lesson. Regret. Failures are not that painful. Yes, they are painful. So, we all know failures are emotional. The moment we fail, we are emotional. The world comes crashing onto us. They are hurtful. People criticize us when we fail. People judge us when we fail. And it is more than physical pain.

So, somebody hit you, it is not that painful. But if you fail, then it is painful. But trust me, the pain of failure is still less than the pain of regret. How many of you, rather many of you, must have heard your mother saying that if I would have been given a chance, I would have become this, this, this in my life. It was only because I wasn’t given a chance.

Or your father saying that I would have bought that property and it would have made a huge lot of difference in our future. We see regret in old people. And what are these regrets? These regrets are regrets of not failing enough. So, yes, failure is painful. But regret is more painful. So, choose your pain.

It is better you do something and then fail. Because in that failing also, there is a lot and a lot of learning that go along the way. I will just try to put an example here. Steve Jobs. So, Steve Jobs was an academic failure, we all know. He quit, he dropped out of his college in his first year. And out of that, he still didn’t stop learning. We all know that he went to calligraphy classes, designing classes, just out of interest. No specific purpose. But he kept on learning. And 10 years later, he connected the dots when he designed Macintosh. He said that if I had not been an academic failure, I would not have been designing Excel.

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Life Beyond Failure

So, this is important that even when you fail, you don’t stop learning or trying to improve yourself. My seventh point is life is too big. Don’t judge yourself on event parameters. So, if you have failed an exam, don’t judge yourself. It’s okay. Don’t just judge yourself with one relationship, one event, one success, one business idea, one entrepreneurial startup. No, don’t judge yourself. And I’ll tell you why.

So, we all know Einstein. So, Einstein was termed as a failure because he could not speak when he was 4. And again, he was termed a failure at 7 because he could not read. And we all know what scientific marvel he was.

Similarly, Edison. We all are enjoying the benefits of inventions of Edison. And Edison was termed as a failure because he had learning disabilities. And we all know that now he has, he has more than 1,000 patents in his name.

So, what people tell you or what you feel at that particular moment is not important. Because sometimes it is inevitable to feel as a failure. But you have to move beyond that feeling. And realize that life is a beautiful journey that goes a long, long way. You never know when this failure will turn to success.

Definitely, we all are working towards success. And we have read in every self-help book on earth that the path to success is laid by the bricks of failure. Yes, these are words. But somehow there is an essence in that also.

Conclusion

So, my three takeaways at the last are: Do what you want to do. Whatever you want to do. Analyze your own wishes. And do them with full passion and vigor. Second, don’t quit learning. Failure is just a small break. Keep learning. You have to focus more on deserving and pursuit rather than success and failure. Because success and failure are just events. But what brings them is your pursuit and your learning.

And my last. So, if you ever think that you have failed. Remember, F-A-I-L means fight again in life. Fight again. You are a fighter. Thank you.

FAIL – Fight Again In Life: Dr Tanu Jain (Transcript)