What is your take on this?
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| Photo by Jonathan Pendleton on Unsplash |
And I highly doubt anyone
begins anything important with the intention of failing.
Yet losing some, and gaining some is part of life's journey.
I get that too.
But that doesn’t stop me from feeling the pain and shame that comes with losing. And my
desire to avoid that at all costs.
Part of the reason for this is that we have grown up in a culture that
frowns at failure. And we have internalized the idea that losing is bad.
I don’t recall any time, while growing up, when failure was actively
accepted or encourage.
And I certainly don’t recall any compelling occasion when anyone attempted to show me, or teach me, how to cope with failure.
That’s something we are left to figure out for ourselves.
Some of us are lucky to figure it out early. Others are laggards and come to it late in life. And then there are still others who never
really catch on.
Our poem this week was examining this aspect of life from the
perspective of football. We wondered why the first goal in football seems to
spur the game, while preliminary failures in life seem to shut most of us down.
Is there a way we can learn to use failure to inspire and encourage us,
instead of shutting us down?
It would be very presumptuous of me to tell you what to do, or how to do
it, because I’m also a seeker.
So allow me to quote from a book we are currently reading in the Ritam
Getaways’s Book Club:
“Very few times in life do we start out at the top of our game...We have
to start somewhere... If we would only grasp the idea that there are a certain
number of compulsory hoops we have to jump through in life in order to be good
at anything, we wouldn’t fear failure.
Failures happen one at a time, and each one has the potential to be the
last. Failures have to be isolated and examined and learned from. They are not
indicative of the value of the person or the effort that went into the attempt.
They are what they are: something that did not work at that moment in time (Emphasis
mine).
The real question in life is not whether you are success or a failure
but whether you are a learner or non-learner...in times of change the
learners inherit the earth … (Emphasis mine).”
This quote comes from Chapter 8 of Better than Good: Creating a life you
can’t wait to live by Zig Ziglar
My interpretation?
This tells me that whenever i come against a wall, I need to assume a
beginner’s mind.
I need to think like I’m just beginning the journey and that my objective
and desire is on the other side of the wall.
And that the next step in my journey is actually an answer to the
question: What is this wall and how do I scale it?
Or to put it in Zig’s language, what lesson does this wall teach me?
Is it an easy thing to do? Based on my little experience so far, absolutely not! Its work. And it requires effort and deliberateness.
But something tells me that if I can find it in me, to open myself to life’s
experiences and lessons, just like i look forward to travel, adventure and hours spent in nature, I can actually learn to enjoy the process and thrive
in it.
What is your take on this?
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