Every day each of us have the opportunity to learn some life lessons. Sometimes it’s from a spectacular fall that we force ourselves to pick up the pieces and remake the beautiful masterpiece that is our life. Other times, it’s from an indiscernible occurrence nudging us back to a sense of self-belief that pushes us forward to achieving great things we never believed were possible.
My Sunday evening reading always unearths the most thought-provoking moments. This week, the consistent theme was “failure” – something none of us enjoy experiencing or want to have to face. Both pieces I read, were personal accounts, of success, failure and learning.
In the first, a CEO, feeling he had let his team down when the company lost their biggest account, believed the only solution was for him to resign.
He recounted to a friend about the terrible day he was having and how he doubted his ability as a leader. The listener allowed him to express his feelings of self-doubt and misgivings about his capabilities and then proceeded to remind him of the many great things he had achieved in the time he had been in his current position, of the positive changes that had come during his time and of how the employees had flourished under his leadership.
His friend reminded him that he had always shared the successes and company achievements with all staff, and as much as success should be shared, similarly, failure was theirs too. This led the CEO to realise where he had gone wrong and that he needed to share the responsibilities of leading the organization with other key staff members.
The second piece was a more personal account of one woman’s awakening to owning your mistake and moving forward to success:
Having taken a bold decision to share her vision with the Chairman of an internationally-acclaimed and admired brand, Sarah Robb O’ Hagan was given the one thing she sought: the opportunity to show her skills and talent, passion and commitment…except she completely messed up! Celebrating her appointment, rather than preparing for her first day, she missed her first meeting and the opportunity to make a positive impact on the team she would be joining. Realising her mistake, she took ownership of the mess she had created, apologized and committed to work hard at changing people’s impression of her.
Both these personal accounts made me realise how success can deafen our ears to the other important things around us, how it numbs us to all other feelings except the euphoria, the feeling of winning something almost inaccessible.
So, when we fail, we fall. Yet when we fall, we can get back up.
Few realise that failure is not an event; something that happens and then hangs around, like a dark cloud over our heads. Rather, failure is the opportunity to review, re-assess, redirect. If not for failure, we could continue, a hapless soul, down a path of smug self-praise.
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Therein, lies the prize. Failure is a moment…of acknowledgement and of acceptance that we have taken the wrong turn…a friendly nudge that we need to change direction, turn back and start again.
Whether you are a CEO, a marketing director, a professional sportsman/woman, failure will find us at some stage in our lifetime. It will find us in moments when we are euphoric, flying high, knocking over everything in our way, slaying the competition, like a cold splash in our face on a winter’s morning.
Failure gives us the promise of tomorrow; it’s the friend that allows us to rise above the disappointment, the embarrassment, the despair and gives us an opportunity to re-calculate, recompense, re-do, and do better. Embrace the lessons and make failure your friend.
By Debra Barnes
