According to Osho, failures feel heavy because we take winning too seriously and fasten our ego to success. Life is a play—sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Share the game, allow others to win, and laugh at your stumbles. When you drop seriousness and identification, failure loses its sting and becomes part of the dance.
Treat life like a game: if you don’t cling to winning, losing won’t hurt so much.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, why is it so hard to accept being a failure? I would rather sacrifice my well-being than admit that I have failed.
I said, "Make it fun. Don't be worried." I had once seen a wrestler ... the village where I lived was famous throughout the area for wrestlers. There were so many gymnasiums in that small village and wrestlers from outside used to come to fight with the wrestlers of the village. Once I had watched a wrestler and had become very friendly with him. His style was very new. First he would dance around. The other wrestler is standing in the center, looking embarrassed, and he would dance. And he had a very beautiful body. He would dance all over the place. And his dance made the other man feel embarrassed and a little afraid also: "If this man is dancing with such joy, there must be some strategy that will defeat me." And then he would suddenly jump to the ground. He was not a very strong man, but…
Beloved Osho, why do I feel that I have failed? Is it because I still hanker to be perfect, superhuman, special? Osho, please don't spare me anything!
Surabhi, the answer that I gave to Suraj Prakash is also the answer for you. Only people who want to be somewhere, somebody, have to suffer the sadness of failure. But a person who never wants to be anybody, never wants to be anywhere else, cannot suffer the sadness of failure -- he is always successful, just like me. From my very childhood, my parents, my well-wishers, my neighbors, my teachers, everybody was saying that, "You are going to be utterly worthless, a good-for-nothing." I said, "If that is my destiny, I am perfectly happy. Why should I try to be somebody else? Utterly useless? -- perfectly good! Good for nothing? I don't see anything wrong in it." And they would say, "Can't you ever talk reasonably?" I said, "It is just a question of reason. Whatever is going to happen, I am going to be successful.... Because I have…
I have known many many successes and only a few failures in my life, but still those few failures are heavy on me, they hurt. Why?
BE A LITTLE PLAYFUL, MAN. If you go on succeeding in everything, then everybody else will go on failing. A few chances to others too -- be a little fair. A story for you to meditate... Joe the gambler walked into a saloon and said to the bartender, "Bet you a dollar I can bite my right eye." The bartender said, "Okay. It's a bet." So Joe took out his glass eye and bit it. The bartender paid up, and then challenged, "Bet you a dollar you can't bite your left eye." Joe accepted the challenge. A crowd gathered. He then removed his dental plates from his mouth and bit his left eye. The bartender smiled and paid up. Then Joe said, "I'll bet you a dollar I can piss on you without getting you wet." This offer was promptly accepted, and then Joe proceeded to do his thing. The…
Osho, this “total surrender” you speak of—the worldly people are never going to accept it. Otherwise a man seems like a sadhu, even a madman, not civilized... If he works with discernment, with a little intelligence, it’s fine; otherwise he’ll be a failure everywhere.
Our trouble is this: we are proceeding on the assumption that success will happen—therefore we fear failure. What I am saying is that we are taking it for granted that success must be. And we never ask how success could exist without failure. Success and failure are the two legs of the same mind. The person who succeeds will also fail—daily. Today he’ll win an election; tomorrow he’ll lose. Today people will praise; tomorrow they’ll condemn. Today he’ll be up; tomorrow down. Lao Tzu used to say: never climb to a place from which you will have to fall. But our desire is to climb precisely to the place from which all have fallen and we alone will not; to climb where no one has ever managed to climb. Our desire is to reach the very place where whoever climbed fell—and there I should not fall: that is what we…
Question: Fourth question: Osho, why is failure inevitable in the world? Everyone thinks others are erring, others are at fault; I am not. And the greatest fault is precisely this. The greatest fault is: “I am the exception.” Here no one is an exception. Here all loves are false, all attachments are false. I say this without exception—all. Don’t think I am saying it to others and not to you; that you are of a different order. No one is of a different order. In this world, whatever we construct is false. What he—the divine—has made is true; what we have made is false. Connect with what he has made and the world bids farewell. Connect with him and failure comes to an end—then there is only success. With him there is never a defeat. Alone, there is nothing but defeat.