Artikel Terbaru

10 February 2016

Learning to Let go of Your Failures

Learning to Let go of Your Failures
How many times have you beaten yourself up for having failed a task or not achieving your set goal?
How many times have you been stuck in a one place after failure?
The world that we live in nowadays can be unforgiving, merciless, intolerant and harsh towards any mistake one makes. It will actually remind you, without failure, of all your mistakes you have ever made - even the minor ones. From our childhood, we are taught to measure ourselves, abilities and talents against that of others. Our brains have been programmed to focus more on our failures than our victories – our conquests are short-lived. The society judges an individual based on those failures:
  • A bad breakup will mean that I’m a bad person;
  • A failed business venture means I do not have what it takes to make it in the industry;
  • Bankruptcy means it is the end of me, that whatever is left of my life is doomed;
  • A rebellious child means I failed the child as a parent;
  • An outburst when still working on your anger issues means I will never be a better person.

The light in the end of the tunnel is realising that letting go of one’s failures will take one to greater heights – it will enable them to reach for their full potential. Failures were and are not meant to be nurtured but to be used as our stepping stones. The important habit will be to learn from our failures and not live with them; failure should be seen as a friendly foe – try to get the best from the relationship but at the same time put a distance between to avoid getting burnt. As much as learning is an integral part to one’s success journey, so is failure.
Never hate on failure because you can never rid yourself or your heart of something that you loathe. Hating something only makes it worse because it becomes part of your life, like the saying goes, it will be staying in your heart rent free. Talk about it but do not dwell much on it. Appreciate and recognise it but do not let it be part of your identity. Study successful people both famous and the ones in your community to learn how they overcame their failures because one guarantee is that to get where they are, they went through disappointments and failures – use their encounters as lessons and not as a way to avoid failing.
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."
- Winston Churchill
Great chefs do not normally get their best dish in one try – they have to try different ways to end up with their perfect menu and that is what we should do with our goals. If you fail in way, try another way until you get it right. Failure does not define you but how you react to it characterises you!
Say you are given a shirt to fold it neatly and on your first attempt you do not get it right - the folds do not appeal to you, what’s your next move? You are obviously going to give it another shot, and another and another until you get it right, right? So what happened here? Because of your believe that this was a simply task and you could easily conquer it, you kept on trying until you got what you wanted without crouching to a corner and wallow in self-pity or labelling yourself a loser. That is how you should view life – that it is all about trial after trial until you get it right. Remember, failing does not make you a failure but giving up on yourself does.
If we apply the shirt-folding technique in our daily lives we can achieve more than we ever knew we were capable of. Emotions often obstruct one’s overall view of the events and hinder them from seeing mistakes in a positive perspective – as learning opportunities.
Finally, I want you to do yourself a favour:
  • that vision that you have set aside because it seemed impossible to do - go and revive it;
  • that dream you pushed aside because it is too late or you are too old (or too young) for that ‘stuff’ – give it a go and know that to achieve your dreams they don’t require you to always be practical and too responsible but they require passion and purpose;
  • people will at times doubt your dreams because they don’t understand them but remember you don’t dream for them but for yourself; 
  • big dreams come with uncertainty and without the blueprint and that is the beauty of it because they make going after them more interesting and allow you to see your potential.
The colour of failure is not black and white – learn to see more than what went wrong but also what went right during the process. Celebrate your victories often.

No comments:

Post a Comment