Hello my name is Patrick and I'm the Chief Moderator for the forum.  Like most people I've failed numerous times in my life! I continue to fail daily and I know I will fail until I take my last breathe on this planet.  I hate to fail but when I do I embrace it because I always learn "something" from it.  As I’ve grown older I’ve come to realize not to let failure affect me too much because with all the times I’ve failed, I'm still here.  Most of my failures I can't even remember.  However, some failures I will never forget. Failure I believe may have saved my life (I'll talk about that later) and some failures are indeed a blessing in disguise!

I've failed many times in my life. Just to name a few:

• I've failed numerous exams in school (from 1st grade to college)
• I've failed at getting in colleges that I wanted to attend
• I've failed at getting jobs that I really wanted
• I've failed at romantic relationships and have been rejected by countless women
• I've failed at the stock market and lost a ton of money (remember the Internet bubble?)
• I've failed at life by almost losing it (got hit my a car, almost drowned)
• I've failed at business ventures I started only to close them because I failed to make enough money

As I mentioned earlier I feel that failure sometimes can save your life. Before 9/11, I interviewed for a job I really wanted.  I was very disappointed I didn't get the job.  But when 9/11 happened on one of the doomed airplanes were employees from the company that turned me down.  I don't know if I would have been on that flight but you never know! Failure to get that job may have saved my life!

When it comes to relationships I have failed many times. Years ago I was in a relationship with a young woman that I was sure I would marry. We were together for four years but we argued a lot.  Looking back it wasn't a good relationship. After the four years of dating we started talking about getting married. A couple of weeks after she told me she told her sister we were talking about getting married she unexpectedly ended the relationship with "NO WARNING"!. I was absolutely devastated. It took me a year to get over it. Turned out she met another guy she became smitten with.

To make a long story short, she did me the biggest favor. Fast forward 3 years later, I meet another young woman who would become my wife with whom I have a far better relationship with. If I had to rate the relationships I went from a 4 to a 9.5. The lesson I learned with the whole ordeal is that "Failure can be a Blessing!" I feel like a lucky man for Failing at Love.

So if you have failed, hopefully you learned from it.  Realize that you will continue to fail and embrace failure as a part of life.  Look at failure for lessons.  If there was no such thing as failure life would be really boring.  Foolish people do not learn from their failures by repeating them, smart people learn from their failure by not repeating them!

It sometimes hurt to read and hear about successful people.  You may think to yourself, “Why can’t I be successful like that person?” But when you dig closer, you may realize that they have failed numerous times before they became successful or they are failing at other things in their lives. 

I decided to start this forum to get a dialogue going so people can help each other.  One of the great gifts of failure is learning from other people's failure.  It can be invaluable information.  We all want to learn about what successful people did to become successful but I strongly believe in studying why people fail will improve your changes of becoming successful.  Ultimately, the goal with learning about failure is to minimize it so you have more successes! (How I Failed! is a division of POB Enterprises).