Failures… honored!
More often we get upset when we fail. We fret and fume and head towards some unknown darkness, may be for a while. But, does that really help? Do we need to count on our failure as we do with the success? It was vital for me to understand get answers to all these questions.
Yesterday, I was talking to one of my good friends. What we concluded from the talk was just amazing. It is not great to have lots and lots of success. Rather it is important to Fail, Resilience and then Gain confidence to achieve your next great success!
While I was talking to my dear friend last night (the same old friend mentioned above), he suddenly started talking about our failures. He said, “Let us keep our success aside for a while and let us honour our failures.”
What did he mean by that? How do we honor our failures?
The list of my failures is unending. I was rejected from the sports team in my school. I was thrown out of the music and painting class as well. I was never able to get into some IITs. I was rejected for job at TCS while I was still studying engineering. My girlfriend dumped me. And so on and so forth… This was the first time I learned that I could actually fail in a huge way.
Now unfortunately cultural wisdom says that when ever we fail there is always something to learn.
We are continually reminded by those around us that failure is an important ingredient in the next success, possibly even a prerequisite. We tell ourselves that failure “happened to us” so that we could learn some important lesson that would later propel us to even more success.
But there is a bigger truth. Sometimes failure sucks. Failure is valuable only when we realize it is a normal part of our life even when there always isn’t something to learn. And there can be a lot of fear involved in this whole failing process. We have all heard about being afraid of failure and more recently, we are supposed to be now afraid of success.
The fear in this process is not brought on by our competitors or other outside people. It mostly originates within us. The biggest fear we have is that someone in our position would have done better than us, made better decisions than us and would have built it faster and more profitably than we did. We believe that that we should be in a different place than where we are right now, and that we would be, if only we had made better decisions. Nonsense. You can’t be anywhere except right here right now. Zen Philosophy says that we need to start from where we are.
I know, I have failed so many times in my life. But there were times when I was completely lost into those failures and there was a lack to resiliency. But somehow or the other I was able to bounce back and achieve my next great success…
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Very nice!!
Very True!!
April 4th, 2008 at 11:00 am
nice one!
April 14th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Its all is true. I have my own philosophy which says that failure comes to tell you “very soon u will get success in your life, but you need to have respect and keep confidence (not overconfidence) on your success ….so I came first to let you realize success is combination of failure and opportunity”
Before doing new task and counting failures in life just say to god “try me” instead of asking “why me?”
February 15th, 2009 at 12:29 am
its correct but every time our mistakes r not behind failures…like u mentiond nt getting into IIT’s i think reservation n similar policies r responsible. And under such conditions hum kya kar sakte hain….wht u say abt it???
February 15th, 2009 at 12:34 am
That is right Akhilesh. Somethings are destiny but I believe in changing it in my own ways. And to some extent I have done it you know that.
February 15th, 2009 at 12:35 am
the topic discussed above is really very inspiring..it gvs us a confidence dat if some how we fail in our task we shudnt be disappntd rather make dat failure our strength in completing the tasks which r b4 us..If v r upset bcoz of our failure we wnt be able 2 overcum dat in our lyf n slowly n gradually wil make our lyf hell…
i personally feel”GIVE UR MAXIMUM N DNT WORRY ABT THE RESULT”
SIR ITS VERY GOOD…
February 19th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Good article.
While going through i was thinking about my failures and this time i am really happy with those.
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Well said, sir.
I believe, if you haven’t made a mistake, you’re not a human.
If you haven’t made a wrong decison, you cannot make a right one.
If you haven’t been wrong, you would never know being right.
Failure is not when you fall, it is, when you fall but you don’t try to stand up again!
I think that’s all what it takes to overcome a failure, stand up, dust yourself and get going!
Cheers to all our failures…..failures honored indeed!
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Thanks Avanika for sharing your thoughts.
Guys, if you are reading it; mention your failures here and tell us know how you turned the table and it became a success story. Share and you will feel good.
April 3rd, 2010 at 4:08 am
Hey amar U showed a different side of being failure . well i strongly believe that nobody can have success without failure,even if their first startup company was successful,that didn’t bang their head plenty of time.Many went through failure in order to find success.You can have success day in and out,but i have found to sustain the energy and enthusiasm that’s going to get you farther,you have to deal with more no’s then yes’s.You need both,there is no question.It’s not like you go out and say —I will have two failures and then have success.Infact it doesn’t matter if you succeed or fail! what matters is that u finish it.What matters is that you dream and work toward that dream because I do believe that as long as you hold that image in your mind and you do the work to get things done,It will happen,it’s just a matter of “when”