Potentiality Digest: You Have to Master Failure

By Sodeeq Abdulakeem Sulyman

Everyone of us desires success, but there is something that beautifies our success stories and that is failure. Failure is an integral part of successful people’s lives. In fact, no successful story is complete without a stage in it where successful individuals faced stumbling blocks that made life tough, challenging and unbearable to them.

There is a wrong impression we all have about failure and the impression is that failure is a bad thing that should be avoided at all cost. However, there are some time we would do all we can to avoid failure and we would still fail. This is to tell us that failure may be avoidable, but it is inevitable. So, when failure happens on the premises of inevitability, it means your Creator has a better calling for you. Oprah Winfrey affirmed that “Failure is simply God’s way of telling you that ‘excuse me, you are moving in the wrong direction.'”

But sometimes, when some people failed, they find it difficult to be revitalised, redefined and reignited to keep pursuing what they believe or to use their failure as a template for them to cultivate a new belief, design a new thinking system that programs them for enviable feats that outlast their prior failures. You don’t fail because you don’t hit your target, you fail when you don’t have a target. So, if you don’t hit your target, try again.

As you are setting for the blessing of this new day, new week, I want to implore you to master the following tricks as you chart your path to success, fulfillment and greatness.

Failure is Inevitable: Yes, you see it right! Failure is inevitable because every step you take towards becoming successful is rolled with it an enormous amount of failures that are meant to redirect you, refresh your thinking patterns and approaches towards life and give your life a new meaning. Thus, you must always know that if you can’t control failure, you can control the impact failure will have on you.

Do Your Best to Avoid Failure: Because failure is inevitable doesn’t mean you should be complacent or be resistant to actions that can propel you to success. No, you have to keep working on yourself to become your best every minute, every day. Those who do things anyhow without acknowledging the impact of failure and strategise on how to mitigate failure end up living a tragic life, because the compounding effect of failure makes their life miserable.

Accept Your Failures: Failing to accept that you have failed is a monumental failure itself. No one ever make a significant leap in life by refusing to accept that they have failed. Sometimes, you may not know that you have failed. But if you want to know how close you are to success, design a metric for measuring your goals, targets and priorities. Rick Warren says, “If you want your life to have impact, focus it! Stop dabbling. Stop trying to do it all. Do less. Prune away even good activities and do only that which matters most.” This means, anytime you go in contrary to what is important to your life, you will know you are heading towards failure and you must accept it.

Learn from Your Failures: Failures are not just life events that are meant to slip away; they are venerable teachers that instruct us on how to avoid repetition of failure. It is acceptable to fail because of your ignorance, but it is stupidity and arrogance that make you fail more than once in the same adventure. So, never waste any lessons that may accompany your failures, rather use them to equip yourself for success.

Share Your Failures: Failures might not have been this paramount in our society if we endeavour to share our failures. The major thing about failure is that you alone may fail right now, but you must do your best to avoid that others also fail where you failed. This is to emphasize to you that your failure become the reason why others will succeed when you summon the courage to share it with them. Someone says, “If you want to oppress people, share your achievements. If you want to impress people, share your success. If you want to inspire people, share your failures.”

Keep Sharpening Your Skills: No one is ever tired of failing if his failures don’t charge him to look at himself and tell himself with utmost sincerity that “I must increase the level of my competencies and abilities. Many people have failed because of their inability to turn avoidable failures to inevitable failures. Nduka Obaigbena submitted that “There is only one principle to succeed, hard work you just keep working at it. I have a philosophy about life that in whatever happened or happens, keep moving.”

Immune to Failures: For you to arrive at the hallmark of the course you are charting in life, you have to reach a level where you will no more be vulnerable to failures. Being immune to failure doesn’t mean you won’t fail in some respects; but you won’t be distracted, your energies would not wane because you have cultivated the characters to outwit failures, you have designed a frame of mind that makes you see positives in every circumstance. That is why Bruce Van Horn says, “Your ability to endure difficult things today is in direct proportion to the clarity of your vision of the future.”

Everyone living the best of their life were once victims of failures. But instead of letting their failures keep them from attaining the heights they desire, they master the signs of failure and make themselves potent to the threats of failure. Les Brown stressed it that “The more you give to life, the more you get from it.”