Cacher is the code snippet organizer for pro developers

'You throw yourself off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down.'

This is a quote from LinkedIn founded Reid Hoffman in an article called Fail to Succeed in the UK edition of Wired, which gives a series of examples of how failing, or the threat of failure, has produced some of the most successful entrepreneurial endeavors of this century.

The analogy of throwing yourself off a cliff really hits home for me. Even when the stakes aren’t exactly gigantic, no other activity can generate a greater yield of learning moments than risk taking, no matter what size they may be. It gives you an ability to adapt quickly, allows for a heightened awareness of danger, and perspective on what stagnation can do to your overall sense of well-being. It also gives you an opportunity to control your own destiny. Which is a huge factor in achieving goals. I think it’s important to live a life that involves a lot of time spent outside of your comfort zone. These precarious moments can be used stepping-stones to becoming the person you want to be by forcing you to deal with the inherent difficulty of living this way, testing your ability to manage stress and showing you how to act quickly and decisively.

Personally speaking, taking this WDI course was a hugely risky venture for me. Even at three weeks in I still don’t know if I’ll be successful. And with every new piece of the syllabus comes more and more doubt. But with a little self-confidence, a little more outside support and a lot of hard work, at least for me, that doubt can be transformed into something motivating and failure can be averted.

But even in a worse case scenario, failure shouldn’t be seen as something fatal. It should be used as a launching pad for whatever it is you’re going to do afterwards. Because there’s always an afterwards. Life doesn’t end with failure. It just starts anew.