Today's Business Lessons
Failure: Event or person
I’ve said this before, and many other speakers have too: “Failure is an event, not a person.”
But when we think deeper, we’d realize this statement is only half right. While the statement’s intent is to encourage people to bounce back when they fail, the fact is, there are people who fail constantly without the faintest idea why they do. So it may be encouraging to say that failure is an event, not a person,but failure also involves the person, more so the person who keeps on experiencing the same kind of failure.
Failures are inevitable in our life’s journey. However, when processed correctly, failures should become lessons that help us avoid similar failures in the future. Thus, we should take time to process our life experiences, as well as study our failures.
“Just because you fail once doesn’t mean you’re gonna fail at everything.” – Marilyn Monroe
“Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” – Coco Chanel, Believing in Ourselves: The Wisdom of Women
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
Studying failure isn’t just about slogans and clichés. There are reasons why some people fail. Let me state some of them:
1. Lack of experience
2. Lack of competence
3. Lack of confidence
4. Lack of preparation
5. Poor execution
6. Pride and ego
7. Being overcome by fear and a lot more
Here’s the truth about failures:it’s never just an event. It’s usually a combination of different factors, events or circumstances. Had failures been simple, there’d be fewer of those. But things wouldn’t have led to the series of events leading to failure had the person avoided the following things (all in random order):
1. Laziness
2. Procrastination
3. Not doing one’s homework
4. Failure to prepare
5. No sense of urgency
6. Wrong timing
7. Wrong words
8. Wrong actions
9. Lack of planning
10. Not being trustworthy or being perceived as dishonest
11. Always blaming others
12. Consistently being average
13. Greed and selfishness, always doing things to promote
self-interest
14. Unwillingness to be helped
15. Providing excuses more than results
16. Being unreliable
17. Rumormonger
18. Entitlement mentality
19. Being a whiner, moaner and complainer
20. Unwillingness to change
21. Creating factions
22. Unfaithfulness and disloyalty
23. Pride and ego
24. And a thousand more other things.
You and I need to level up everyday. We need to do our best and to be our best.
Development of our character is a must – learning from our mistakes and from the mistakes of others, refusing to play the dirty game others are playing, loving the opportunity to be productive, being faithful in everything we do, and loving God and our family. We will make mistakes. We will meet unexpected blows. A storm surge, an adversity surge and an economic breakdown are things beyond our control. But when we develop ourselves in the things we can, then we can face any storm, and emerge stronger and wiser.
Jesus never promised that storms wouldn’t come into our lives. But He promised that He will always be with us, especially in the fiercest of storms. Let this be a consistent thought as we celebrate Christmas.
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