One of the most repeated training topic I have facilitated this season is Emotional Intelligence. Contrally to my expectation the biggest concern has been around self-motivation. The aspect of self-motivation revolves around one’s ability to set challenging goals, have the drive to achieve them and stay committed to the course. The beauty of this concern is however not the fact that people do not set challenging goals but that they have very high expectations of themselves.
As most young professionals put it; ‘I set very high goals for myself then I get disappointed when I do not achieve them and give up.’ Though the epitome of self-motivation is having resilience and optimism, I think we have a deeper problem. We have a problem that arise based on how we view failure and negative/constructive feedback. This problem arises from childhood. We were taught that we should always be right. Every mistake was punished. Failing a test in class was followed by punishment from teachers, parents and ridicule from fellow classmates.
If you were disciplined and good in academics you were always celebrated. Unfortunately, life is not that straightforward. Being disciplined or academically good does not shield you from failure in life. The sense of perfection that school taught us is totally tested in the real world. It hence takes a willing person to unlearn the meaning of failure. To learn to look at failure as an opportunity to learn, grow and become better. To also learn that no one is perfect and no goals are hit in one shot. This then allows one to give themselves the grace to fail and try again.
Words I picked from a sermon last Sunday summarizes it. For you to finish strong in all that you do, you need to commit to two things 1) You will finish no matter what 2) You will expect obstacles and so no difficulty will surprise you. People who push to the end do not have less obstacles they have just made a decision to finish what they started. They also know that obstacles/failure are part of the journey. They view obstacles as challenges to overcome. They also do not personalize failure as an inherent flaw. If you find it hard to depersonalize negative feedback or failure, remember, “You are not a failure and you need to quit telling yourself that you could have avoided failing, no successful person ever avoids the pain in hope for the gains.”
Fear of failure is the biggest thief of people’s dreams. We all have childhood or adulthood dreams that we want to live. Every time we talk about them it’s as if something bubbles up from within. Our eyes brighten, our face glows and everyone can feel the excitement in our words. Why then do we shy away from starting? Or why do we give up on the first attempt? Our sense of failure is more of an attitude than an outcome. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “No man is defeated until he has first been defeated from within.” In short you have only failed if you think you have; it’s your perception that rules your world. Maybe we need to learn something from animals on the law of wasted efforts.
Do you know that lions only succeed in a quarter of their hunting attempts? This means they fail in 75% of their attempts and succeed in only 25% of their attempts. Despite this small percentage of success shared by most predators, they don’t despair in their pursuit and hunting attempts. Do you know that half of the eggs of fish are eaten… half of the baby bears die before puberty and most of the seeds of trees are eaten by birds? Animals, trees, and other forces of nature are more receptive to the law of ‘wasted efforts.’
Seems like it’s only human beings who think that lack of success in a few attempts is failure. We need to learn how to walk through our mistakes, go beyond the wasted efforts and move to the next stage. The biggest challenge in adulthood is to redefine the definition of failure. To learn how to count it as part of success and not as the opposite of success. In the words of Malcom X “Children have lessons adult should learn, to Not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so safe and therefore so shrinking, rigid and afraid. That is why so many humans fail. Most middle aged adults have resigned themselves to failure.”
The beauty of failure is that it’s a great teacher. Each mistake teaches you something new about yourself. You learn more from failure than from success. In the words of Bill Gates, “Success is a lousy teacher; it seduces smart people into thinking they cannot lose.” Failure builds character and the only way to never fail is to never try anything new.
Your dream does not have an expiration date; Take a deep breath and try again! Remember in the words of Winston Churchill, Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it’s the courage to continue that counts.