So another plan of yours has crashed and burned. Things didn’t go the way you expected they would. You’re not an idiot so of course you had a back-up plan, just in case, but even that didn’t account for just how badly things would turn out.
This could apply to anything really…disastrous final exam results, a failed relationship, a career move gone wrong or a prayer not answered the way you’d hoped.
Here’s my theory on failure/success: We’ve all heard successful people talk about how often they had to endure disappointment and feelings of inadequacy and doubt before they finally struck the proverbial gold! I, myself, am nowhere near the life of my dreams, but hear me out for a second.
What if each of us has a set number of “failures” assigned to us before we succeed, depending on the size of our dream, our personality and character, our history, and what we need to learn along the journey? What if another determining factor in how many times we will fail is how much we’re willing to take or learn from each disappointment? Otherwise, we may have to have a repeat lesson.
Nevertheless, I believe that the bottom line is success is guaranteed for all of us, once we get through our set number of failures.
With this in mind, that would mean that this failure could be your last. Or maybe your next attempt could also fail, but maybe that will be your last let-down before you accomplish your goal. You could be on the last few failures before you reach your dream!! The more failures you experience, the closer you are to your destiny!! Isn’t that exciting? Doesn’t that make failure feel less devastating, and yet still necessary in charting your growth as a person?
A friend invited my family to church one day, and in giving us directions, he said to just keep driving along this long road, and just keep going. He didn’t give us the exact distance but he just said it would be quite a long drive, and we just had to keep going until it felt like we had probably missed it (LOL), and around that time, we would see a bunch of cars parked by the side of the road, and that was the place!
As we drove along, I remember that feeling coming over me that he had spoken of…I thought, surely we’ve missed the turn somewhere! How far could it be? Should we maybe just turn around and go back? The only thing that kept pushing us was, we had already come so far, we might as well keep going. One more mile, and then another. And just like he had said in his atrocious but strangely accurate directions, we eventually made it to our destination.
If we had turned around in frustration, we would never have made it. We could have probably made it in time to a different church, and that would have been OK, but that’s not what we set out to do that day. You too could be just one more mile, one more failure, away from your dream. But you will never know if you give up. Your next try could be the one that does it! Your next phone call could be the one that changes everything. Or the next one. Or the one after that. You will never know if you don’t try.
Sure, you will still be alright either way…but if it’s not what you WANT, if it’s not the thing that wakes you up excited every morning and full of passion about the future…are you really willing to give that up?
Failure is not when things didn’t work out. Failure is when you stop trying.
