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This is a great question and even greater answers.  If I aim to fail and achieve that goal, should I not be proud that I reached my goal because it is not the result, but the effort and commitment exerted that would be praised ("as long as you do your best!").

If I aim to fail, and succeed at failing, then am I a successful failure?

Chicken or the egg!  Love this post!

If you try to fail and succeed, you are not really trying to fail at all. In fact, one would have to put forth the minimal requirements or do nothing at all, depending on what the goal was or wasn't. So personally, failing is just a lack of commitment and effort.

if u try to fail but succeed then u surely succeeded in ur goal but if u try to fail and fail hen u succeeded

Wow! Apparently the word "failure" is a hot button here! I like this question because it seems like a puzzle. My answer would be "both." Suppose you are taking a test. You try to fail the test. You do fail the test. So . . . You failed the test, AND you succeeded in your efforts to fail the test!

We can turn that scenario around, also. You are taking a test. You try to fail the test, but end up with a passing score. So . . . you succeeded in that you passed the test, AND you failed in your efforts to post a below-passing score.

I think I have a headache now, but that was fun!

If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?

You succeeded to fail.

This is especially applicable when considering goals and activities. Attempting to accomplish a task that is counter-productive to your mission, is failure whether you succeed at it or not. In this topic, if you succeeded, you only succeeded at failing, and if you failed, you failed at failing. Either result is a failure because you set out to fail, which can produce only one of two results – fail or fail. This illustrates the importance of wisely choosing tasks when trying to achieve a goal.

-Eljay