Balance And Spirit

Life After Failure

By Joe Marchelewski ⋅ June 4, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Subscribe By Email ⋅ Post a comment

The hardest part of life is failure, other than death of course. Failure is something that has plagued mankind since the beginning. Even in the Bible, Adam had to deal with his own failings while still protecting and caring for his family.

George Bernard Shaw, the great Irish playwright, once said “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.”

It’s easy to give up on an endeavor, a person or a situation as failure, or failures, mount. But, if we allow failures to stop us then we should completely throw away any notion of success, development and hope.

Failures are our learning opportunities, even if it’s a major failure. Failed marriages can teach us things about ourselves and our desires that we didn’t know before. Failed attempts at losing weight can allow us to figure out how our bodies work. And in truth, history is filled with people who achieved great things in part because they failed so much.

• J. Paul Getty was an extremely wealthy and successful man, yet was married and divorced more than five times. His business success and acumen wasn’t something he could bring into his personal life.
• Abraham Lincoln lost multiple elections and was often berated for his stances against slavery.
• Jim Plunkett, who led two Raiders teams to victories in the Super Bowl was considered a failure during his days as a quarterback with the New England Patriots and San Francisco 49ers.

Dealing with failure is hard, it’s not easy to look into the mirror after a terrible loss and try and believe that success is possible. It’s easy to use all sorts of cheesy sounding sayings and terms and then let failure sit in your belly. What’s difficult is taking time to examine your failure, learn from it and fight to get over your fear of it.

We’ve all been dumped, fired, yelled at, fallen down during a big event, allowed a bad habit to get the better of us and simply failed at something that seemed easy. However, if we’re going to succeed in life, achieve our goals and do anything of merit, than we have to allow these things to make us stronger.