The Success of Failure

Article for Bethlehem Matrimonial - Nov 2014

Many of us have the habit of planning important events in our lives. These could vary from deciding on higher education or getting married or building/buying a house and lots more. A lot of time gets invested in thinking how to plan and execute each of these events. It is also a usual practice to consult our family and friends before taking such major decisions.

A final decision is usually reached after all such discussions and evaluating the possible options. You even reach a point where you tell your mind that this is the best decision for you and gives a thumbs-up to go ahead with it. It is then, only a matter of time you taste the happiness of the successful decision you took. Occasionally there are times when you end up not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

The success, especially after all the meticulous planning and execution, elates your mind with all the positive feelings that come along with it. A failure could have an equal or at times even more of an impact on your mind. You may experience the power of your positive spirit getting drenched in the water of despair. Some of us feel like being pulled down from the pedestal of sense-of-achievement to an eternal disappointment that we don’t even want to attempt anything else in life. What we fail to observe is the power that comes along with each such failures.

It is absolutely true that every failure teaches you a much bigger lesson than the biggest ever success could make you learn. Probably the hormones that drive the extreme happiness during a success, clouds your ability to learn from it. It could also be due to the fact that, hardly anyone asks themselves, ‘Why did I succeed?’ This is not the case when you fail. Almost everyone does look back knowingly or unknowingly to see where did they fail. This action indeed is the best teacher.

The secret to succeed is not to worry about failures. This must be exactly what Edison meant by saying, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” This is quite true in our lives when we set out to achieve the many different events as mentioned earlier. It is quite natural to feel dejected if you do not succeed even after all the planning and almost certain conclusion. You feel let down and the mental strength seemed to get drained. You experience a very strange phenomenon during a failure. The mountain of confidence you had till a moment back gets bulldozed into a pile of desperation.

It is ok to feel heartbroken since it is an outlet for your mind to let go the bad feeling created with a failure. What is not ok is to linger in the same thoughts for a prolonged period of time. It might sound strange, but realize that failure does have its own good side to it. Each time you fail you learn a few additional aspects of the event in hand. Look at the level of knowledge you had at the beginning of the event. See for yourself how much have you learned with a failure. You’ll be surprised to see that you’ve learned so much more than what you knew earlier. You’ll be better equipped to take up the same task next time with a lot more confidence than before!

Just the way you try to learn from each failure, it is equally important to make yourself trained to take the failures lightly. Remember the well known statement, ‘everything has its own time’. There is a bigger power Who knows what is best for you. Till then it may seem to you that things are not working out the way you want. But realize that it is part of His bigger plans to make things better for you.

Let me leave you with this thought: ‘To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven’. Ecclesiastes 3:1.

God bless you!