The reason it’s so important to answer this question is this: You can’t say that you failed at something without having had a clearly defined vision of what success would have looked like.
I’ll go even further and say that success for any given endeavor may not necessarily be a stationary target – I would argue that your idea of what success looks like should organically evolve with the work.
But there is another adjacent but critical concept to always keep in mind. Even if you fail to achieve something you had a clearly defined outcome for, if you find yourself thinking “I am a failure,” you must immediately stop and recognize this as a cognitive distortion, a toxic script you are playing out in your mind that has no basis in reality.
You should instead be proud of your failures, because they are proof that you are growing and moving forward. Understand that this is what successful people do.
They fail. Over and over and over again, until they finally get it right. So if you’re failing, just remember this:
You’re getting closer to success.