Failure

      You have probably tried many things in your life: In school, at work, in your personal life or within other situations.   There may have been things that you didn’t try!  Why?  Could it have been you held back on doing something because you were afraid of failure?  Most people have!  Let’s face it; no one likes to fail.  None of us likes to feel like we’re ineffective, weak or lacking in any way, and that’s exactly how failure makes us feel.  It can almost consume us with the feelings that we can’t do anything right!  Or that our life is useless because of our failures!

     However, you may be surprised to learn a simple truth that many people never come to understand and that is: failure doesn’t exist – until YOU say it does.  In the dictionary, failure has several definitions:  1)  a failing to do or perform  2)  a state of inability to perform a normal function adequately  3)  a fracturing or giving way under stress  4)  a lack of success.  Look carefully at those definitions and you’ll probably realize they have one thing in common when it comes to goal achievement:  failure is a PERCEPTION.

     Consider the comments concerning Thomas Edison, the inventor of the electric light bulb. Thomas Edison’s teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything.”  He was fired from his first two jobs for being “non-productive.”  As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb.  When a reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times.  The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”

     If you believe you have failed, then you have.  If you believe you don’t have the ability to succeed, then you don’t.  If you believe you can’t handle the pressure of achieving your goals, you can’t.  If you believe you’re not successful, you aren’t.  Failure only exists in your own mind!  The moment you decide to give up or stop working toward your goals, failure is born.

     But what if you never do that?  What if you could be like “The Little Engine That Could?”  This is an old children’s book used to teach children the value of optimism and hard work.  Whatever needed to be faced, that little engine continued to remind itself, “I think I can” and so it did! 

     Or what if you could learn the teaching that Master Yoda gave Luke Skywalker in “The Empire Strikes Back” when he raises the X-wing fighter from the swamp of Dagobah?  Watch the video replay and learn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3-CpzZJl8w

     What if you continue working toward your goals, one step at a time for as long as it takes?  There’s no failure then, is there?  This insight should be very encouraging if you’ve been working toward goals and are not yet seeing positive results.  Simply keep going and you cannot fail!

     Here are three tips to help you stay strong and focused on your goals:

1)         Never give yourself an out.  Most people do this without even realizing it.  They are willing to work hard on achieving their goals, until the going gets too rough or their motivation dwindles.  Don’t do that!  Commit to making your goals happen, no matter what!  Never quit, never contemplate admitting failure, and never lose your inner determination.  Or as the crew of the NSEA Protector, the starship from “Galaxy Quest” said: “Never give-up, never surrender.”

2)         Don’t get hooked on a specific timeframe for completion.  It’s okay to set a general timeline, but be aware that some circumstances will be beyond your control, so you can’t say for sure when your goal will be achieved.  If you do that, you’re just setting yourself up for failure!  Instead, get a general idea of when you’d like your goal to be completed, but then take it a day at a time and focus on making progress, not reaching the finish line in as little time as possible.  A friend once told me concerning an event that I was in expectation of, “Keep telling yourself, it will be here tomorrow!  One day you’re going to be right!”

3)         Finally, be sure that you don’t view obstacles and setbacks as failures.  The two are completely different.  An obstacle, setback or delay means only one thing:  it’s not time for your goal to be completed yet.  That’s it!  It doesn’t mean you failed; it doesn’t mean you’re weak; it doesn’t mean you’ll never achieve your goals.  It simply means you’re not done yet.  You’ve got to keep moving forward and find a way around or through the obstacle.  When you drive your vehicle to some destination and along the way encounter detours, you may be delayed in reaching your destination, but you have not failed to reach it unless YOU choose to give-up!

     The only thing that holds us back with anything in our lives is ourselves!  We are always our worst enemy.  But, then again, we’re only human!

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"If you always move forward,

you will inevitably reach your goal!"