22nd
Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8
I’ve touched on this a bit in various ways, so I figure I should directly address it.
Failure.
It seems to be a fairly universal feeling now, with thousands and thousands of people being laid off, and businesses shutting down. We are being put into bad situations, and we are beyond the point of finger pointing. Since we are all feeling a degree of this pain right now, perhaps some ways of approaching it will be timely.
First off, as mentioned earlier, take responsibility for what was your doing — to be accountable and gracious in these situations will often lead to other opportunities. In other words, you can’t win all the time, look at the Patriots from last year. They lost the most important game. Realizing this, have a way to deal when you do lose. And make that being gracious, and agreeable. No one likes a sore loser. If you can be gracious about it, the faster you can move on to the next thing.
Next, get up quickly. Don’t let a momentary slip ground you forever. It’s like stumbling on a crack in the sidewalk — you keep walking after the stumble, but you remember that crack was there and learned from it. The important thing is to not let yourself fall down, and stay down. Get up, and get up fast. No point in wallowing in your own self-pity.
Before you move on, take a hard look at what occurred. It is often said we can learn more from our failures than our successes, and I believe it. Consider your failures your biggest learning opportunities. Have a thorough post-mortem, or, as I like to call them, after-parties. Dissect, break down, analyze. Find pieces to learn from for the future. The more you do this the more you can avoid what might have caused it. Spend the most time here, analyzing, learning, seeing cause and effect. Turn the failure into opportunity by learning from it. Without this part you lose any possibility of turning it around into something positive, so do it and do it well.
And finally, take a moment before you move on to realize you’re human. You, and everyone else, makes mistakes. Don’t be too hard on yourself or others. Be understanding of the human condition. Computers crash because they’re flawed objects created by flawed humans. But often its our flaws that give us character, that sets us apart. If we are were perfect, and looked the same, who would we be?
Realize, too, that if you are out there, trying hard, taking risks and sharing ideas, you will fail sometimes. That’s how it is. But do not stop doing what you think is right, and taking risks and getting after it because you slip once in a while.
Just make sure you learn from it when you do, and you’ll be alright.
