FAILURE IS NOT FINAL

We have all at a point in our lives tried to do something but failed, but failure is not final. It is only final when we stop trying and give up.

The truth is failure is a learning curve, it is life’s way of teaching us what we need to know so that we may be better people and better equipped to deal with the things that life throws at us. We have all gone through failure, whether it be in business, relationships or other areas of our lives. It can be devastating to deal with, it can even make one hopeless because you believe that, you will never get right, whatever it is that you are trying to achieve.

The truth is some of the most valuable lessons we will ever learn, we learn from failure. And when we don’t let that define who we are, we then gain experience that we wouldn’t have otherwise learned from life.

Failure is a lesson. A chance to try again, knowing now what you didn’t know when you started out before. Failure is a chance to change direction, when we realise that we have been travelling on the wrong road. Failure is an opportunity not a rejection. Failure is what you go through, not who you are. Just because you failed at something doesn’t mean that you are a failure.

Anything that we want in life is never handed over to us, we have to fight for it and work for it. Along the way, we encounter failures, we trip and we fall and things do not work out the way that we planned. Sometimes we make the wrong choices and that is what leads us to fail. Our dreams and aspirations should be so firm that not even failure or the fear of failure stops us from pursuing the things that we want. Sometimes we do not even fail in the literal sense but we fail in our heads, we convince ourselves that our dreams are too big for us and that we don’t have what it takes to achieve and accomplish the things that we want.

When you encounter failure in any area of your life. Here are 3 things that you need to do:

1.    Reflect

We are usually quick to write ourselves off or become despondent because things have not worked out the way that we hoped. We concentrate solely on what went wrong that we miss the lesson that is carried in the experience. So the next time, you are faced with failure in your life. Sit and take the time to reflect, what went wrong? What choices could I have made differently? What lesson can I take from this experience?

2.    Make a decision

Once you have reflected and gathered whatever information lies in your failure, you are now equipped with experience and the know how that you did not have before. Now you are ready to make a decision, plot a way forward. Where will you go from here? What will you do differently to ensure that you do not fail again? What lessons will you embrace from this experience?

3.    Get up and try again

When you are done reflecting, you have looked back and seen where you went wrong, you have made a decision to try a new method or new way to do what you want. Now you get up and try again. Not with the attitude of a failure but as a completely different person, one who now knows all the things you didn’t know before. And you tell yourself that failure is not an option.

None of us sitting here today can say we don’t know what it feels like to fail or to try something out but it doesn’t work out. We have all gone through that road and we know the feelings that come with not getting things right. But we should also realise that without falling as we did in the past, none of us would be the women that we are today. We have the strength and experience that we have today because we failed at something and learned from the experience.

Whatever failure you are facing today, embrace the process with a smile because you will not be the same person that you were before your storm. You will emerge refined and you will be a better person for having faced what you did. Failure is not final, it is only final when we give up and stop trying.