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iQuestions Faculty, Pat Gelsinger 
 
 
Question: 
 
What failure have you learned from in life? 
 
Answer:  
 
How do you handle failure? That’s pretty tough.  
 
A number of years ago—you know, I’ve had great success in the 
workplace, and almost every assignment I’ve had, I’ve gotten good 
results from, but all of a sudden, I got a project where the harder I 
worked, the more it would fail. And finally, after really hunkering down 
and just having a siege mentality to make this successful, it just 
wasn’t going to work. In fact, I got fired from the job. 
 
Boy, I felt terrible. I came home from work at 1:00 in the afternoon. 
My wife was wondering, “What on earth?” because I was just so 
depressed. I’d never come home at 1:00. Boy, I loved my job—but a 
failure. 
 
When you’re successful, you become so caught up in yourself, so 
optimistic, maybe a touch arrogant. You don’t learn anything. 
 
But when you fail, that’s when you learn. That’s when you deeply look 
at yourself, the situation, you introspect—and those are the 
opportunities for you to really grow.  
 
Embrace failure. Take those situations and say, “How can I grow? How 
can I learn? What is God trying to teach me in those situations?” 
because that’s when you are ready to learn and really change who you 
are, your character, and how you will become in the future.  
 
 
 
Failure is the greatest opportunity God is giving you to grow and 
change for the future. Don’t be afraid of it. Embrace it and learn from 
it.  
 
 
Gelsinger -2- 
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