Why Flounder Is Good

Facing adversity in life can often change people in negative ways, even though they are presented with an opportunity to learn from the challenges they face.

When faced with a hardship in life,certain aspects of people can change negatively. Even though an individual can become a more generous and caring person after experiencing a life changing event, that is not always the case. When an individual who has lived a perfect and successful life attempts to fulfill a task, and their attempt is in vain, how will they react to their own personal failure? Despite the possible positive outcomes, the negative ones are more likely to occur, such as: melancholy, self-loathing, fear of persevering, etc. Not everyone in the world is full of positivity
More often than not, people tend to run away from their problems, instead of facing them. Courage seems to be a dying trait these days; how common it is to turn a blind eye to the issues of life! Wouldn’t it be easier to never have to run away at all? In the nonfiction article “Why Floundering is Good” by Annie Murphy Paul, paragraph one claims: “...the more [someone struggles] and even [fails] while [they are] trying to master new information, the better [they are] likely to recall and apply that information later.” This isn’t necessarily true, if an extremely accomplished student cannot understand or master a concept, they may simply give up, deeming the task impossible. Being so adjusted to succeeding can
People born with natural talent hardly ever face challenges regarding the category they are proficient in. Imagine an academically gifted child, who decides to learn how to play the cello. This child quickly becomes frustrated with the advanced techniques and skills they are required to learn but cannot grasp, and quits altogether. Nothing was learned from this failure, the child did not retain any information they were taught regarding the cello. In the first paragraph of “Adversity: An Opportunity to Choose Growth” a nonfiction article by Camille Preston, Ph.D, PCC, it asks the rhetorical question:”What will [someone] do to turn adversity into a learning opportunity?” Few people turn mistakes into opportunities to grow as a person. Instead, they turn from one thing to the next, giving up every time they fail. Isn’t it best for people to stick to what they’re good at, in order to avoid getting hurt? Of course, some people claim to be “untalented”, but everyone enjoys doing something important to them - perfect at it or not. Being content with life is the end goal, and if someone has failed often enough to be dissatisfied with their life, it was not a happy life they lived. To quote Thomas Edison: “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Obviously, if someone does not succeed, they