How many of you have risen from failure in life? It is normal to feel unaccomplished, but the key here is to learn and strive along. I have a story for you, straight out of the pages of my college life, a story about how my friends acted like a rock, each time I hit rock bottom and never let me give up. It all started two days before my national basketball match. One small infection in my right arm came out to be an inborne disease that can reoccur in any limb at any point in time. The incident left me completely flabbergasted. There was not even a single second when I could take my mind off from that disturbing thought, I kept on dwelling about my arm, how it will be treated and will I ever be able to play again. All these thoughts kept me awake at night slowly, and steadily it led to depression. I couldn’t assimilate the idea of not being able to play Nationals. I felt like a complete loser, felt like nothing will work out. I felt incapacitated. That is when my friends showed up. As soon as they heard about my condition, all of them decided to stay back with me to help me cope. They tried all sorts of things to infuse positivity in my college life. From cooking me our midnight Maggi with juice to encouraging me to dress up for random picture sessions, they did it all. My friends made me realize how important it is to cherish all the little things in our life. No incident is worth giving up on yourself and your self-confidence and on the other hand, it is these little failures that help us to explore and teach resilience.

What message does my college story convey? The most important key to live a positive and successful life is to understand the origin of the failure and how to surmount it. Failure, no matter how much it hurts, is a part of our lives. As said by Zig Ziglar “Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street”. People usually correlate failure with defeat, but they don’t understand that failure is an exceptional stepping stone towards the pathway to success. Failing does not mean it is the end of the world but at the same time, it opens the door to discover other great opportunities.