When you understand these five essential truths about failure, you’ll be able to handle your setbacks better and set a brighter, more optimistic course for the future.

1. Failure is inevitable.

You can’t escape failure. Any successful entrepreneur who tells you he or she has never failed in the history of his or her business is lying. Success can only come through experience, and experience is incomplete without failure. If you spend more than a day working on something, it’s only a matter of time before something goes wrong.

Of course, that isn’t to say that all businesses are destined for failure. Your inevitable failures could be small in comparison, such as hiring the wrong person, missing a shipment or coming up short of your annual financial projections. When you face the consequences of your failure, remember that failure is an essential part of the entrepreneurial process, and even the most seemingly successful people have experienced it.

2. Every failure you survive is a learning experience. 

No matter how big or small your failure is, it’s possible to look at it as a learning experience. Even if your entire business goes under, you can take the lessons you learned from this failure and apply them to your next venture. By doing this, you rob the failure of its power -- it isn’t a sign that you are incapable of achieving something. Instead, it’s just a hard step in the right direction.

The best way to learn from any failure is to perform a thorough root cause analysis. What factors led to this failure? Why did this happen the way it did? How can you improve your processes, outlook and yourself to avoid this type of failure in the future? As long as you can make some kind of improvement, the failure will be worthwhile.

TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE, VISIT ENTREPRENEUR.