Failure is what we allow to
happen.
The theme of my life is get
back up after I’ve been knocked down, to bounce back from inevitable failure. I’ve
been knocked down a lot over the years and I’ve in the process I’ve learned a
thing or two about the subject so here’s my advice; Learn to survive failure
Failure services a purpose. For
one thing it confronting failure directing and not by protecting ourselves from
it gives us self-confidence that lasts. Confronting failure also teaches us how
to survive failure.
It’s a lesson worth learning
because the possibility of failure in everyday life is tremendous. Each time we
reach out to another person its risk, the risk of involvement. To love someone is
to risk not being loved in return. When we feel passionately about a cause we
risk hope. When we strive for anything, large or small, we risk failure.
Still in all, risk is good because
the only other option is to have an empty live …no hope, no joy, no love….we
also end up with nothing worth having because of the path we’ve chosen to take
by living a life filled with discouragement, bitterness. A life without trust, a life without vision
and dreams. And perhaps all of this has happened to us because we have failed
at surviving failure.
We fail at surviving failure
because our concept of what failure is. It took me four decades to understand
this simple fact…. failure is not a circumstance. Circumstance in a person’s
life are often beyond their control. Nor is failure determined by life mistakes
like a failed marriage, an addiction and so on. Life circumstances and life
mistakes just happen and people bounce back from them all the time. Rather it
is how we respond to those two things that determine failure. We fail when we give up in the face of poverty,
loneliness, anger, drugs and so on. We fail when we let circumstances control
us instead (After you’ve got up off of the canvas) to control them.
Don’t fail at surviving
failure. Have a happy and successful
life and learn how to handle failure because your response to failure
determines your destiny. Virtually every
great person in the history of the world has failed and what made them great
was that they learned how to come back from failure. They understood that
failure means nothing and that their steadfast refusal to accept failure as a permanent
condition means everything. In the words of Winston Churchill, "It is the
courage to continue that counts."
Learn to bounce back and
understand that bounce back doesn’t have much to do with blind optimism. Rather
the key in bouncing back is to fully experience your feeling in any situation, good
or bad and put them in prospective. In other words one bad day is not the end
of the world and one great day won’t mean much a day later. They are just
feeling about something. Control them and don’t let them control you.
Be an optimist but realistically
optimistic. Learn to combine the positive outlook of an optimist with the
critical thinking of a pessimists. Banish negative what-ifs. They only lead to
fear and will hold you back. Create enough negative what-ifs and you can talk yourself
out of anything including all of your dreams.
Don’t accept the situation for
what it look likes. Be creative. Have as many back up plans as you can to face
any situation…including walking away. But
remember that owning up to failures and coping with thier aftermath will force
you to come up with new ideas and strategies that might work the next time….and
there WILL be a next. Remember it’s a learning experience. Setbacks and
challenges can be our most powerful learning opportunities.
Build a social support system
to help you get back up again. Have people you can talk to.
Stay positive. Successful
people are positive people they take notice and appreciate the hundreds of miracles
that we come across in the course of a day. Find the positive and tap into it.
Count your little victories because acknowledging you’re little and seemingly
insignificant victories will keep you from deciding that “Everything that can
go wrong has gone wrong” because that’s an overreaction and it never happens.
Embrace the almost, the near win, especially if your just starting out because
it takes decades to create a masterpiece.
Be grateful and practice gratitude
because among other things gratitude boosts your mental health and well-being.
