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Today's
quotation:
Life's
lessons come through failures probably more than successes.
Through our failures we learn humility. We learn to
look to others
for help and guidance. We learn how to let others
fail, too. We fail because we are human. When we no longer fear
failure, we are
free to attempt greater feats. We dare to learn more,
and life is fuller
for it-- not just our own lives, but the lives that we touch.
unattributed
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Today's
Meditation:
I have a lot
of failures to look back on in my life.
Relationships, plans, efforts, work-- there's a whole array
of things that have gone wrong when I've tried to do
things that I just couldn't do. But there's also
been a tremendous amount of learning that has taken place
as a result of those failures, so I have no regret for
them at all. I know that I honestly have tried my
best-- often with limited knowledge and experience-- so a
failure isn't a waste of my time or effort.
I don't fear failure any more. I do my best to avoid
it when I can, but I know that sometime in the future, I
will fail again. And again. And that's okay,
as long as I put my best effort into what I do and do my
best to make things work out. One of the cool things
that I've learned is that very often, what looks like
failure is actually a huge success-- just because something
doesn't turn out the way that I thought it should doesn't mean
that something very positive doesn't come out of it.
Allowing ourselves and others to fail is perhaps one of
the most important abilities that we have in our
lives. It frees us from the unrealistic expectations
of perfectionism, and it keeps us from judging harshly
when something doesn't turn out as one hopes it
will. Some of my best students have developed after
failing a paper or a test-- suddenly they've realized that
they do need to study, or to spend more time on their
papers, if they want to succeed in a particular class by
learning the material that they're expected to
learn. The failure is a catalyst to much better
things, and turns out to be a very positive part of their
educational experiences.
We can't avoid failure, so it would be a good idea to
allow it in our lives, accept it for what it is, and learn
what we can from it instead of fighting it so
strongly. Yes, we should do our best to avoid it
when we have something planned, but if we keep in mind the
fact that failures will happen, we can accept them
gracefully and use them to help us to better our lives,
our careers, our relationships, and anything else that's
important to us.
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