My Worst Failure Was Being Rejected from My Dream Internship. The biggest failure I have experienced to date is when I was rejected from an internship at Jackson Annuities. I had previously worked at this company, so when I got denied, it felt very personal to me. I felt embarrassed. I felt disappointed. Honestly, I felt like a failure. Since I had worked at Jackson Annuities previously, I felt like I would be a shoo-in to get the job again. When I didn’t, I questioned myself. My worth, my skills, and whether I was even good enough to make it in the business world. I let that failure get to me for longer than it should have.
But as you can see, failure helped me learn one of the biggest lessons of my life. I learned that I can’t always count on other people or companies to hand me my future. No matter how qualified you may think you are, there will always be times when someone else has all of the power. That experience motivated me to sit down and really think about what I wanted in my career and what kind of life I wanted to live.
That’s when I decided to switch to entrepreneurship. I didn’t want to sit around and wait for someone to hand me the opportunities I wanted; I wanted to create my own opportunities. Entrepreneurship caught my eye because it is all about taking initiative, being creative, and believing in yourself. It allowed me to have the mindset that if I work hard enough and take the risk, I can build something for myself.
My biggest failure led me to learn so much about life and helped me grow to become who I am today. I learned resilience, how to be independent, and how to trust myself. Although that rejection hurt at the time, I now know that it was something that was guiding me towards my future self, who depends on me more than anyone else could.