Will Smith Explains Why It's Actually Alright to Fail in Inspirational Instagram Story

It may come as a surprise, but despite having an estimated net worth of $250 million, actor Will Smith is no stranger to failure. Yes, among the dozens of movies he's starred in, there have been some that weren't exactly great. Just look at the reviews for Netflix's Bright. 

Will Smith recently decided to take to his Instagram story with an inspirational lecture on how to deal with failure. 

Smith says in full:

"Fail early. Fail often. Fail forward," Smith begins. "It's always a little bit frustrating to me when people have a negative relationship with failure. Failure is a massive part of being able to be successful. You have to get comfortable with failure. You have to actually seek failure. Failure is where all the lessons are."

"When you go to the gym and you work out, you're actually seeking failure. You want to take your muscles to the point where you seek failure because that's where the adaptation is. That's where growth is. Successful people fail a lot.  They fail a whole lot more than they succeed. They extract the lessons from the failure and they use the energy and wisdom to come around to the next phase of success."

"You gotta take a shot, you have to live at the edge of your capabilities. You gotta live where you're almost certain you're gonna fail. That's the reason for practice, practice is controlled failure. You're getting to your limit, getting to your limit, getting to your limit, you can't life that, you can't do that, until you get to the point where your body makes the adjustment and then you can do it. Failure actually helps you to recognise the areas where you need to evolve."

"So fail early, fail often, fail forward."   

Unsurprisingly, social media users were pretty inspired by the speech. 

Fail forward, people.