Failure: A stepping stone to success

‘’One of the secrets of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks’’­…….. Jack Penn

‘’Sometimes it is better to fail than to succeed because failure leads to great achievement eventually’’…… Robert Schuller

Hmm … Failure!   Failure!!  Failure!!! … Are you depressed right now because of some of the ugly events of the past especially the once characterized by failure? Ride on! 

It might interest you to know that, most of the people we see as successful individuals today are those who have witnessed failure and interpreted it as the ingredients of success. They saw failure as stepping stone to success. Remember Rome was not built in a day. Those who see themselves as failure are people who did not realize how close they were to success before they quit.

John Roger and McWilliams wrote ‘’ The common denominators of all successful people is persistence’’. Life really is not static, little wonder the Japanese assents, ‘’Fall seven times, rise eight times. 

Most at times failure only suggest that your previous technique for success may not have been adequate or was not carried out properly. It makes you step in your tracks and make the decision to abandon whatever it is you are doing right now, to follow another track where your success lies.

In creating the pathway to success, failure is put in the dashboard of our lives in order to be seen moving. Sometimes, we neglect the warning sign and go on into the imaginative scenes of emotions. Without failure, some of the things we appreciate now, would not have been discovered.

Failure is an opportunity for learning, growing, improving and transforming. The key to transforming failure is in what we do when we fail… The right attitude to failure.

Staci J. Shelton proposed the steps for turning into success to include:

• Regroup

•  Review

•   Redesign

•    Re-lunch

Regroup: Whenever you fail to achieve your proposed goal, the first thing to do is to re-group, although one feels frustrated when he/she fails to achieve his /her expectation, process the feeling, forgive yourself and take a break. Give yourself time to emotionally process what just happened. Appreciate how you feel, what you didn’t live, and more importantly, identify how you want things to go the next time.

When you neglect to regroup, you will be at the risk of making decisions born out of fear, doubt, panic, anger or all of this. Be conscious of the facts that trial and error are all part of the journey. Success doesn’t come immediately.

Review: Even if you feel that the whole project collapsed, when you look back at it, there is always something that worked. What things went extremely well?

What did you feel good about? Note all these things. They will boost your confidence and help you look objectively at part two of the review process, looking at the things that did not do so well.

Redesign: This involves adjustments and improvements. Retain what worked, change what didn’t and redesign your experience. Review and keep those that worked, and have a new plan for success. This leads to the next step, which is to put it into action.

Relaunch: You can never be successful if you remain stuck in analysis and let the fact that the first, second, fourth or twentieth venture wasn’t a success. Launch your new and improved process. When we fail and not getting what we want, offer us opportunity to learn and develop. It is not avoiding failure that creates success. It is what we learn from it that covers.

It doesn't matter how many times you fail in life, what matters is your attitude when you fail.