It’s easy to look around and see success everywhere. Other designers, developers, business owners, companies… they’re all doing great! They’re not screwing things up. They’re making incredible things. How can I possibly do that well? How can I avoid failing?

Here’s the thing: The success you see everywhere is deceptive. People curate what they share. Success is celebrated, but failures are rarely made public. What you see from the outside is everything that went well and nothing that didn’t. You’re only getting part of the story.

That incredible logo? That amazing website? That wonderful copy? Not their first attempt. Probably not even their hundredth. That great work is standing on a foundation of failure, one built out of numerous false starts, prototypes that didn’t work, and countless iterations that transformed the raw material of a vague idea into something wonderful.

Many people have the mistaken impression that the path to success looks like this:

1. Start.
2. Succeed.

That’s not how it works. Failure is part of the process. Any successful person, if they’re being candid, will tell you the path looks a lot more like this:

1. Start.
2. Fail & learn.
3. Fail & learn.
4. Fail & learn.
5. Fail & learn.
6. Fail & learn.
7. Fail & learn.
8. Fail & learn.
9. Fail & learn.
10. Succeed.

(Note: Number of steps may vary!)

Each failure is an opportunity to learn and grow. Each one is literally one step closer to success. Many people, when confronted with their first or second major failure, stop and give up. The choice you make when confronted with failure is one of the key differences between people who succeed and those that don’t.

In order to succeed, we need teachers to show us the way forward. Failure is one of the greatest teachers. Some lessons can only be learned through the act of failing. Don’t lament the absence of success, instead revel in the fact that you know a little more than you did before and are now that much closer to success.