March 9, 2014
Dealing With Failure
Failure is inevitable, embrace it.
Almost everyone knows that Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. But most don’t know that Walt Disney was once fired from a newspaper for a lack of ideas and his first cartoon production company went bankrupt. The fact is everyone fails in life but it is a gift if you don’t give up and are willing to learn, improve, and grow because of it. Failure often serves as a defining moment, a cross road on the journey of your life. It gives you a test designed to measure your courage, perseverance, commitment and dedication. Are you a pretender who gives up after a little adversity or a contender who keeps getting up after getting knocked down? Failure provides you with a great opportunity to decide how much you really want something. Will you give up? Or will you dig deeper, commit more, work harder, learn and get better? If you know that this is what you truly want you will be willing to pay the price that greatness requires. You will be willing to fail again and again in order to succeed. Sometimes we have to lose a goal to find our destiny. Sometimes a failure helps us see that we really don’t want it and we want something else. Whatever path failure guides you towards, it is always meant to give you a big serving of humble pie that builds your character, gives you perspective, grows your faith, and makes you appreciate your success later on. If you didn’t fail you wouldn’t become the kind of person who ultimately succeeds. So the next time you fail don’t let it keep you from the life you were born to live and the future you were meant to create. See failure as a test, a teacher, a detour to a better outcome and an event that builds a better you. Failure is not meant to be final and fatal. It is not meant to define you. It is meant to refine you to be all that you are meant to be. When you see failure as a blessing instead of a curse you will turn the gift of failure into a stepping stone that leads to the gift of success. Have you embraced the times you have failed?