How do you feel when you hear the word, "Failure"? If you're like most people, the feeling and emotion evoked when one hears this word tends to err more on the negative side of things than the positive. Is feeling negative when you hear that word our fault? If you asked me, I'd say, "No". Our culture and society has already decided that answer for us. Compare a winning grade, "A", to a failing grade, "F". When something has failed, the effort is all but abandoned and terminated. Bad feels are associated with failure. We're afraid to admit that this happened to us. We're afraid to tell loved ones that we didn't make the cut. "I failed at that job", "I failed in that relationship", "I failed as a teacher", "I failed my employees". Just writing about this is starting to really bring me down!
Tired of feeling down? If I go on writing like this, I certainly will be. So let's change course and sail towards smoother waters. Let's get out of the dark storm clouds and into the clear, warm blue sky. I've got a question for you; Do you really think failing and failure is really that bad? I don't. Instead of a dead end, I look at failure as a beginning. Failure is just another chance to get things right. Just because it doesn't work the first time doesn't mean you can't try again until you feel satisfied with your efforts. Why should one shot determine everything?
Sometimes we don't realize how much control we have in any given situation. When I speak of control I don't mean the negative connotation of that word. Control, just like failure, can be a very positive thing. Positive control means that you are using all your energy to see a task through. You are owning the situation. When you reach the finish line, you are the one who feels jubilant because you were the one that got yourself there, no one else.
When you have positive control over a situation, then it's up to you to take the time to get to where you want to be. If you fail the first time, so what! You pick yourself up and do it again. As you keep repeating the same task over in an effort to make it better, you learn something new, something more, each and every time you put your foot on the starting line and run the race. Each time you run the race, you have a better understanding of how you can get to the finish line in the best and most effective way possible. Succeeding often means running the race more than once.
Such is life. We may only get one chance in the body we have, but it's up to us to make the best of what we do with our bodies once we're here. If that means failing 50 times before we get it right, who is to judge if you are the one who is in control? The only judge is yourself. You can be your own worst enemy. Your Inner Judge can often be quite harsh with you. But here's a secret; you have control over that too. You let your Inner Judge be as harsh as it wants to be. So remove that part of you from the race and just enjoy the run. The Inner Judge may always be there but you don't have agree with what it may tell you. Are you really your Inner Judge? No! No matter how many times you have to do it, have a blast each and every time you find yourself placing your foot on the starting line. Is that failing? Only if you choose to think so.
There's a key word in the last sentence of the last paragraph. Can you guess what it is? Answer; "Choose". Could it be that failure is a choice we make? Even if someone says you've failed, isn't it your choice to buy into that belief or not? Even if the whole world thinks you've failed, who cares! What you think and feel about any situation is totally up to you and no one else.
Just think how much more productive any educational situation would be if the polarities of passing and failing wouldn't hang over the proceedings? Learning has nothing to do with succeeding or failing. Learning is, well, learning! When one learns, one doesn't succeed or fail. Learning is like breathing. It's a natural part of being here each and every day. As long as we continue to learn, we continue to grow. How cares about how we got there?
We are all winners. Winning is a choice. It's an attitude and a mindset that's totally up to us to become. Getting there is what's important, not how many times it took to win the race. The fact that we ran in the race is what's important. The first person to cross the finish line is just as special, just as important, just as worthy, just as loving, just as great a human being as the very last person to cross that very same finish line.
Failing has everything to do with living life to its fullest potential. So in effect, couldn't we really say that failing is really winning? If we don't choose to see failure as something bad, the sky's the limit. Even if it takes more than one try to get there.
