Learning to See Failure as a Gift by Hadley

Learning to See Failure as a Gift by Hadley - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

The thoughts used to come every few minutes, breaking through my daily routine like bullets. What would I do, when they came unbidden? Lacking restraint, I would just let them in. At the beginning of my junior year of high school, my struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder increased in intensity.. The condition had always been an undefined part of my life – subtly affecting the way I thought about life and loss – but it had begun to take over every aspect of my mind and I was completely failing to control it.

Mental illness is not as concrete or definable as physical illness. You cannot take a pill and make it all better. Instead you must learn to communicate, cooperate and dissipate the monster in your head through mental fortitude. When my OCD began to worsen, I did not know how to confront the thoughts and tendencies that are the symptoms of the disease.Instead, I began to listen to the voice in my head whispering threats and fears. I let myself be taken over by the condition, and that act of stepping aside to let the OCD take over is my biggest failure to date.

My mom taught me growing up that one has only really failed if one does not find a lesson in the mistake. Immeasurable achievements I am most proud of came from the lessons learned from my failure to control my OCD. I have found inner strength I didn’t know I had, have learned to listen to my fearful self without believing everything it says,and I have learned that sometimes the best way to succeed is not to rage against your failure but to accept it is a step in your learning process and move on wiser than you were before.