Failure

What happened to big dreams, big goals, and big ambitions? At the start of the phase, month, or year, you might have listed a few things you intended to do with your life – obviously with success-oriented plans and milestones to keep track of your progress and guide you along the path of your victory.

Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

Forget my jokes; Fire Nation in this sense refers to the so-called ‘downs of life’. They are the unexpected, unforeseen events which you were unfortunately grossly unprepared for. Yes, in all your strategizing and planning for one success after the other, you didn’t anticipate or factor in the possibility of a failure or minor setback. And now, you’re either stagnant, off course or at ground zero.

What happened to all the optimism? Was it real at all? Did you really have hope or faith I your plans and actions? I doubt that. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be giving up and losing hope at every storm life throws your way. If you’ve planned out a life of success without preparing to weather a few storms and overcome a few obstacles, then go back to the drawing board.

Life isn’t and won’t ever be a story of consecutive successes - one success after another after another. Sometimes, failure in turn teaches us one or two things: whether it’s from others’ experiences or ours. Failures and Setbacks are supposed to be springboards – we’re meant to leap off them, minds sharpened and ready. By failing, we know what’s involved, what’s at stake and risks involved.

We’re too busy not wanting to fail and putting all effort into not failing at ‘all’ costs. The danger there is that when we finally do fail (which is mostly inevitable), we do not know how to handle it, what steps to take from there. So we then give up, cursing life and how things or people are against us.

Life should be about choices, not circumstances. The odds are always going to be against us. And if you spend all day looking for bright, sunny weather so you can begin your journey, the seasoned, refined seamen who know how to ‘walk on water’ and have battled and won out against the storms of life will go on ahead.

Failure should be avoided where possible, but not feared. Failure shouldn’t be taken as a devastating blow, but a harsh lecture from a mean college professor from which lessons should be learned that would change your life and outlook. In other words, don’t go out waiting out for failure, but anticipate and prepare for it. And when you do fail, learn, so as not to fail again.

They so nobody’s perfect, but they still say practice makes perfect so you never give up. In essence, the two sayings work together, keeping a balance in all our efforts. I believe, from correcting our imperfections, we take a step towards ‘perfection’, depending on what it means to you.

Stay focused!