The Cheetah is the fastest animal alive. It belongs to the big cat family. Watching a cheetah chase down a gazelle at a Kenyan Safari park one day, I learnt a great lesson. The Cheetah had chased the gazelle but a last minute maneuver by the animal made the cat miss its pounce. But within a few minutes the cat had gained its breathe and was chasing down another prey. This time it grasped its prize and settled down to tear it to shreds. The Cheetah did not give up. Giving up would mean going hungry. If only human beings could be like that.
Failure was designed to make champions better. Everyone who wants to succeed in life must learn to embrace failure and make it a teacher rather than a whip with which we beat ourselves up! Author and teacher Brian Tracey teaches that we should “fail forward”. In other words, increase our failure rate so that in the midst of those misses there would be one or two triumphs with which we hit our targets. Nobody fails forever. A wise man once said: “The bull’s eye scored by an archer is often a result of a thousand misses!” Failure is an event, not a person. Remember what we were told growing up? “If you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. That’s four tries in all. But I urge you to try at whatever you are determined to do at least three dozen times. The odds are, if you succeed once, you will know 35 ways of how not to do what you are engaging in.
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Edson Arantes Dos Nacimento, the footballer the world knows as Pele once said he has scored over a thousand goals, but the misses are the ones he remembers most. From near misses, we get a picture of how it should be and how it could have been. We need to understand that nothing good comes easy in this world. All things that are good require a considerable effort for success. But if nothing is ventured nothing is achieved. In sports when a champion fails, he looks even better when he dusts himself up and comes back and wins. It’s virtually impossible to learn how to sail without tipping the boat a couple of times. While learning to play the piano you would often strike a key that is out of place and disrupt the tune you are playing a little. But the making of a champion is part of the process of moving from a failure to a success. He who dares wins and once you win, failure is a thing of the past. When I started public speaking, I would often be able to tell, by the expressions of my listeners, whether my talk had hit home properly or not. Instead of feeling disappointed when I fall short, I would begin to ask myself: “what can I do to make it better?” That singular question made me challenge myself to get better. I only compete against myself and my honest motivation is to always do better than the last time. I am not the best in the world yet, but I’m close!
Let this be your watch word: Failure was designed to make champions better!
Even the most gifted people failed at something and most of them have not let that deter them. Failure is supposed to raise our learning curve, shock us into realization that there is still something missing. If we can humble ourselves and see this vacuum, then it can be filled. Human beings are so self conscious that in most cases they don’t like to be corrected. Nobody likes to be told: You are going wrong, but if we realize it ourselves the effort to correct our mistakes or misdeeds is rapidly pursued.
The late Bruce Lee was a martial artist who wowed the world with his exceptional talent in Kung Fu martial arts. Lee was a full contact martial arts expert who developed a philosophy and technique of his own that enabled him overcome opponents. Lee would size an opponent up and keep looking for the weakest point of resistance. Finding that weak point would give him a channel to focus on; this focus enabled him to defeat his opponents even after initially having a setback. Lee’s philosophy teaches us that failure opens the doors for reflection that eventually leads to success and victory.
If there is no perfection anywhere on this earth, then even failure can be defeated, if it’s properly attacked.
Failure is described as an orphan. Those people who fail at major tasks often find themselves alone, abandoned by those who milled around them when they were on their success boulevard. The loneliness should never be a source of devastation or depression. Being alone at this phase of your life could have its benefits. It should be a place for meditation and repair. If you ever fail at anything worthwhile, your attitude should be: Back up and ask yourself questions: Could this be done in a different way that could lead to success? Do I have the required knowledge and understanding of the process? Who can help me?
Your experience of missing the mark, though unpleasant could contribute to your personal encyclopedia of learning. That’s the way to handle failure.
