I was supposed to handle a seminar on the weekend of September 13. I met with the organiser sometime in August and we finalised every thing to do at the meeting. Some days to the day of the seminar, I received a call from the organiser informing me of the cancellation of the event. She told me the patronage has not been encouraging and that she doesn’t want to fail at her first attempt. Putting it in her own words, “it is not good to fail!”
I didn’t know what to say initially and I didn’t want to push a conversation about what she just said because I know people want to conserve the little fund they have on their phone. I started thinking about this immediately she dropped and was wondering if she knew what she has just said and the effect that statement could have on her present and the future.
From the little expeience I have had over the years, I have come to realise that the reason a lot of people do not achieve anything worthwhile in life is due to the fact that people don’t want to experience failure in anything they do, so it is better not to try than fail. This mindset has incapacitated a lot of people and make them stay at a point rather than move forward.
I don’t know what you have wished away just because you don’t want to experience the bitterness of failure but I want to let you know that you have in one way or the other disturbed your growth. What most of us term as failure is not really what we think it is. Failure is something we should all embrace if we are to achieve our dreams because it comes as lessons in disguise.
A top Motivational Speaker said we don’t learn so much from our success but our failures teach us a lot of things. When you succeed, you don’t think so much about the lessons but when you fail now and again, you will learn important lessons why that has happened and you will know what to do the next time.
When Thomas Edison was working on the incadescent lamp, he was trying and trying but couldn’t get the desired breakthrough. People asked him why he kept trying when it was apparent that he was failing over and over again. He replied them that what they termed as failures are positive feedbacks because he is learning how not to do those things and will look for new ways. We are all beneficiaries of Edison’s positive mindset these days.
If those before us have been afraid of failing and never tried, I am not sure we will be experiencing all the technological breakthroughs we are having now. If Henry Ford has been afraid of failing, I am not sure we would have stopped riding chariots as cars today. The aeroplane wouldn’t have been around if the Wright Brothers had feared failure and I am not sure I will be inspiring you today if the fear of failing has been predominant in my life years back.
I wish I could write about all the things I have put my hands into that didn’t work. I wish I could let you into the money I have lost into projects I so much believed in, I wish I could tell you so much about those lofty ideas I conceived with so much enthusiasm but never saw the light of the day. I have learnt not to focus on things that didn’t or will not work out but the things that will eventually work out. Fear of failing doesn’t move me because I know if I fail, I will come out of that situation a BETTER person.
This is the mindset of all achievers and if you want to be an achiever, follow your dreams without minding whether failure is staring you in the eyes or not. When you do that particular thing, you will be motivated to do something bigger and better than what you have done in the past.
My challenge to you this day is never to fear failure and even when it occurs embrace it and look at the important lessons you have learnt and MOVE ON with your life. The next time you try, you won’t repeat the same mistake you made the first time out.
GO OUT THERE AND START FOLLOWING YOUR DREAM TODAY!
October 1st, 2008 at 5:35 am
Failing to start is failing to succeed. You can’t know better what you have not tried. Why was it ever said that ‘experience is the best teacher’? Think about it. And you know what? I have learnt that what you go the distance to do in spite of time and consequences are the very things you can claim mastery over. No more - no less!
Bola, keep up the good work.
October 1st, 2008 at 7:32 am
You have hit the nail rightly. many fail to dare and so they fail. Look up the article on my site http://www.selfdevelopmenthaven.blogspot.com
about failing tittled ‘You Must Fail’
In my motivational speaking i always tell people to embrace failure as it is good.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Failure is the antidote to success, if you must succeed failure will always lurk in the corner. there is nobody who ever succeeded who never tasted failure. If you fear failure you will remain at a spot.
Joseph Nwokonta.