Failures and challenges
The question isn't did you fail but did you pick yourself up and move ahead? And there is one other little question: 'Did you collaborate in your own defeat?' A lot of people do. Learn not to.
The thing you have to understand is that the capacities you actually develop to the full come out as the result of an interplay between you and life's challenges—and the challenges keep changing. Life pulls things out of you.
Failure is simply a reason to strength resolve.
"It's all right to be a late bloomer if you don't miss the flower show." Churchill didn't miss it.
Winston Churchill went through 24 years of ups and downs.