Monday Motivation: 10 Truths You Need To Know About Failure
Mary Odunuga
Everyone should fail at something and in my opinion, that something should be so great that it causes a major paradigm shift in thinking and eventually in action. I have started this way so that you can understand that no matter how great you think your failure is, first, someone has had it worse and second, it is no excuse for you to stay down.
Failure isn’t necessarily an evil thing. Sometimes when failure happens, it comes because it is needed so that one can take another course and sometimes it is so painful that we can see no reason for or advantage of it. Either way, failure has come and knowing the truth about it might help ease the pain and loss we feel when it comes.
Here are 10 truths to hold dear to your heart about failure:
1. If you want to achieve greatly, don’t be afraid to fail greatly. Being afraid of failure is the biggest roadblock to success. Overcoming the fear of failure will help you overcome your procrastination and any excuses you might have for inaction.
2. Avoid regrets. Think things through before you act on them. This will reduce how much regret you feel after you have failed at something you thought through. Instead, be quick to learn from failures when they happen because it does not matter how you fall. What matters is how you get back up.
3. The key is to move on; to keep trying and never give up until you win, until you succeed.
4. Success comes to those who let their failures instruct them. In fact, the best time for sowing the seeds of success is the season of failure. You want to know if a man will succeed, check what he does during his time of failure.
5. I have never really understood how people can stand untrue friends, especially those they know will drop them the minute they can sense they are about to fail. People you want to surround you when you are successful should be those you are not afraid of failing around because you know they will be there to lift you up when you are too weak to keep going.
6. To achieve anything useful, we cannot afford to go on a spree without checking our ways once in a while. These checks sometimes come as failure so at these times, it is to propel reflection so that we can succeed exceptionally.
7. Failure is actually a time for you to celebrate. History is filled with people who have failed time and time again but have risen up to create great products, instruments and lifestyles that have defined our world today.
8. A leader is one who can afford to fail and fail again. They hardly wait for precedence but take calculated risks. They are also the ones who take responsibility for their failures and learn from them. If you want to be seen as a leader, you have to learn to be okay with failing.
9. Failure teaches us to look at ourselves first and see where we got it wrong. If we keep looking outwards every time we fail, then there is nothing we can do as a person to correct the problem. Assuming responsibility for what has gone wrong will help in effectively analyzing what went wrong and taking action to correct it.
10. Let failure pass after you have learned from it. Never call failure yours. It was an experience that came to make you a better person and make you see and do things better. Remember your goal is to succeed. Don’t ever forget it!
Failure is the journey; Success is your destination.